2013 is the year most in need or a revisit. Every major release from this year plays different today than it did seven years ago.
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Episode 1: Kentucky Route Zero is arguably the richest text of its time in video games, but it's a series bookended by episodes that I don't think wholeheartedly reflect the urgency and empathy of its magic realism. Case in point: episode 1 is a paired down, reflective, and languidly paced trek that primarily occurs via text boxes and a thin, monochrome grid of a map. The writing is DEFINITELY there, but it's lacking in context provided by later episodes, and the imagery the game uses at the outset just isn't as profound or as fascinating as other episodes. Episode 1 is in itself a meaningful examination of America, sure, but it's almost certainly the least important part of Kentucky Route Zero. Considering the sheer potency of the writing and imagery in later episodes, I think the non-commital 'idk just go wherever' format was the series' most severe (only?) misstep. If episode 1 was as tightly designed, uniquely portrayed and as willing to occasionally surrender to the natural levity of magic realism as even episode 2, I think Kentucky Route Zero would've been a bit more widely appreciated. Which brings me to... Limits & Demonstrations: Arguably *more* inscrutable than episode 1 somehow, but this time all the more fascinating for it. This short piece consists of three heretofore uninitroduced protagonists in Kentucky Route Zero as they observe and discuss the impossible art exhibitions in a gallery, all of which hint towards future events in the series. It's not the most fascinating expedition into KRZ's mythos, but it adds that essential flavor and flat humor that make the series what it is. For me, checking out this little mini-episode is what grabbed me after bouncing off of episode 1 twice. Episode 2: Kentucky Route Zero clicked with me right away in a way Episode 1 did not. Episode 1 is about with the hollowing of rural America and the few scraps afforded to those trying to get by within it, and in practice played like sleepwalking through T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland with friendlier narrators; it's a game about people being left behind in time and withering from it. Episode 2 is about the overstimulation and desecration of the life of the contemporary worker, and the inscrutable labyrinth of The New Workplace. If episode 1 passes by in a haze as you drift from shuttered business to shuttered business, episode 2 demands a kind of analytical laser focus. The simple act of traversing episode 2's landscape (let alone interpreting its thematic meaning) demands the memorization of a ruleset no one in the game's world can sufficiently explain, even if they've grown accustomed to it. It's an acute, viscerally evocative representation of the algorithmic nature of modern life. The Entertainment: This is the moment in which I realized Kentucky Route Zero was not only good, but that it could end up as one of the best written video games ever produced. This second mini episode is structured like a play about the internal monologue of a drunken barfly, longtime bar patrons with even longer tabs and an embittered bar owner who this time, after years of threats, is finally ready to give up the ghost. It's an affecting, Tennessee Williams-esque exploration of working class destitution, poverty tourism of the upper classes, loyalty, hope in spite of futility, and the steamroller that is big business. It's a jarring, incredible text that not only works as a piece of art in and of itself but that also further reinforces the core themes and mysteries intertwined within Kentucky Route Zero's primary episodes. The blurred lines between reality, art and unreality are never as bold as they are in this sequence, and the twist ending puts most of the work's perspective on its role as an 'empathy game' about people and capitalism into focus.
More than almost any other game in what has become a packed genre, Gone Home satisfies my addiction to explore spaces. Every single object, room, notebook and unpacked box has narrative significance to this game's unseen cast. As authentic a representation of what it is to be a teenager in America as you're likely to find.
A distillation of deconstructionist criticism, an analysis of the illusion that is player choice, and a deeply funny satire of game design, player expectation, and the corporate rat race.
(Citadel DLC) Mass Effect's final chapter is arguably the greatest instance of fan service in video games. It drops almost all pretense of plot importance to give players a dozen or so more hours with its incredible cast of characters. Playing this after moving home from college was like immediately reliving all the difficult goodbyes in video game form.
Viewed through the lens of what we do and don't do consider possible within the AAA video game space, The Last of Us just kinda...has it all, really. We didn't need another apocalyptic zombie survival story, but The Last of Us demands that its tired genre tropes should reveal more about the human condition than the ever-retold 'people are the real monsters' twist. Neil Druckman's script allows us to spend hours in intimate conversation with its traumatized protagonists, and rarely indulges in pointless acts of cruelty or brutality. Its combat design is incredible, too. A zillion games promise that you'll have to really consider your ammo and supplies before opening fire on an enemy, but this game is the first time finding a single bullet gave me a wave of relief. On harder difficulties, surviving The Last of Us' fungal enemies is an intoxicating blend of problem-solving and quick reflexes. Makes The Walking Dead - and by that I mean the comics, the television show and the games - look like a trifle by comparison.
Grand Theft Auto V is one of the greatest technical achievements in the industry's history, and the tightest the franchise has felt EVER mechanically. Its infinitely memorable cast of sociopaths/vessels for American satire and its "is this actually about to happen?" mission design make for an incredible, immersive experience like little else out there. I've always wished it would've made good on the promise of its more down to Earth forebears, but I still can't help but love it.
Saints Row IV escalated the comedy and mechanics of Saints Row: The Third SO HARD it broke the franchise and sent it straight to hell. This is a Crackdown-like, right down to the orbs, but a Crackdown-like in which the characters and their relationships with one another is the focus, alongside parodies of Mass Effect, The Matrix, Jane Austen, early 2010s American politics, and the Saints Row Franchise itself. It's a joyful, addicting rampage of a game. Where Saints Row: The Third doesn't quite hold up as well as it did in 2011, Saints Row IV is a great time by the sheer value that it plays so well as a sloppy, B-tier superhero game. I love the soundtrack, too, which puts me right back in that 2013 dubstep bubble (dubble?). It's unclear where the franchise could've possibly gone from here (considering Gat out of Hell and Agents of Mayhem, probably nowhere), but for my money this is still the best Saints Row game out there.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the first game in the franchise to insist the player should always have something to do. In that sense, it's more game-y than ever. This made the franchise's inherent repetition feel like more of a grind to me than past entries - I was no longer booting up the game every night just because I wanted to see what was going on in my tiny world, but instead because I had profits to generate. Oh well. What an adorable, deeply charming grind it was anyway.
Like any good entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise, Black Flag has some excellent ideas that it either pummels into the ground via repetition or fails to commit to enough to do something truly new. The out of animus sequences, for example, I thought were brilliant conceptually, but the game only has the patience to build so much tension in its secret, sinister corporate big bad before the whole thing explodes in yet another bat-shit plot twist. On the other hand, as much as I loved the change of tone from 3, I just could not bring myself to like or care about Edward. His whole 'i'm a shithead with a redemptive arc' thing is so rote and predictable. You can see his exact trajectory as a character the second he appears onscreen. The thing I'll carry away with me from Black Flag will be the open design. Sure, Black Flag is identical in function to the last five or so Ass Creed titles, but how you frame these games matters a great deal. Black Flag's open seas are beautiful and thrilling to explore, and while the meat of the gameplay could accurately be reduced to 'run to place to pick up thing,' 'play minigame,' 'smack guys' and 'point boat towards thing and wait,' the levels are gorgeous enough and interesting enough that I'm more than willing to re-engage with the otherwise mechanical nature of the series. And, hey, that last hour or so of the Ubisoft dev studio sequence aside? What a fascinating and weird thing to do, framing your questionable re-framing of history video game as a propaganda piece *in the text*. I'm not gonna sit here and say that that's, like, a great thing for a developer to do, but what a fuckin' big weird choice that is to make.
State of Decay's legacy would be quite a bit more robust had it released in a year other than 2013. As a semi-procgen resource management sim, State of Decay is second-to-none, but it's a *zombie*-flavored management sim, released in a market saturated with zombie media - worse, it came out the year the first AAA post-zombie zombie game, The Last of Us, released. On a pure aesthetic level State of Decay could only look like a bargain bin cash-in. But it's so much more than that. While this first game doesn't come anywhere near State of Decay 2's robust procedural elements, which brim with personality, the seeds of its better sequel lie buried here. There's a visceral thrill inherent to this game's permadeath and the cascading effects of it - other titles with permadeath, even XCOM, don't do it quite as well. Getting caught in a jam, surrounded by zombies, narrowly breaking free and realizing, 'oh no...I don't have the stamina to keep running from these guys' is a heart pounding experience. Unlike its sequel, State of Decay is unfortunately a visual mess, and its glitchy as all get out. I saw a looootta zombies get stuck in walls, fences, and other pieces of level geometry. It's a messy experience for sure, but there's something pretty special buried underneath that mess.