by cybexx
Once more into the brink. These are favourite games from 2013, filtered down to just ten and finalized in May. I have made the decision to not include episodic games that have not finished their run as the ones I'm thinking of (The Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead Season 2, Republique, Kentucky Route Zero) have barely started.
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Joel and Ellie's tale is the best relationship story between two characters in a game since Monkey and Trip in Enslaved. There is a believable amount of time given to let their relationship grow from distrust to mutual respect to a surrogate father/daughter bond. Where The Last of Us pushes beyond anything seen in a game before is the complexities of their bond, how that plays out with what they are willing to do for each other and how they come to depend on each other.
This is the best Zelda game since Ocarina of Time. Ocarina of Time is my favourite game of all time so trust me when I say this is an amazing game. It intelligently revisits the the halcyon days of the series while mixing up the Zelda formula more than any Zelda game since A Link to the Past arguably did. Smart design all around and incredibly charming.
Crystal Dynamics re-imagines Lara as a young inexperienced archaeology graduate out to prove herself. She is stranded on LOST-style magical island that won't let anyone leave and she battles against a mercenary group to protect her friends. The gameplay itself is solid and owes a lot to the Uncharted series but it carves its own path with a metroidvania-style gear-gating that makes exploring the island a joy. Lara's bow is a fantastic and versatile weapon that is enjoyable to use throughout the entire game. While there is some cognitive dissonance with her bodycount, I feel that Crystal is mostly successful with her transition from a scared desperate girl to a blood-soaked valkyrie by borrowing Spec-Ops: The Line's technique of changing the barks from Lara and her foes to fit the current arc of the story. The writing for her is much more believable than the best of her buxom one-liner spewing predecessor.
Brother's unique dual-brother control scheme may feel a little gimmicky at first but there are some incredibly clever uses of the controls throughout the game. The art direction is really good and there are some awe inspiring moments when character animation and level design come together seamlessly. The ending ties the story and gameplay together in a way that very few games ever achieve.
Dear Esther had great graphics but it felt like I was wandering through a well-narrated art gallery. Gone Home very much feels like a real place. You can pick up items, you can read receipts, you actively unravel the house as you explore it. The voiced notes told a much better and more touching story than Dear Esther's elaborate prose ever did. More than a visual novel, Gone Home is very much an Adventure Game, one with infrequent and simple puzzles but a Adventure Game none the less. By the end I was happy that all its allusions to ghosts, murders were no more than that and it was confident enough with itself to tell a simple human story, because we need more of those in games.
As a developer there are those games that make you slap yourself on the forehead for not thinking of the idea first, Gunpoint is one of those games. I followed Tom Francis's development of this game for years and I was not disappointed by the final result. The core mechanic is the ability to rewire electrical devices to each other. So you could rewire a light switch to activate an elevator. Or wire an elevator so that when it stops on a certain floor it turns off the lighting for that floor. Or you could say rewire a guard's gun so that when he spots you and fires the gun it actually overloads the electrical socket he is standing beside, which zaps him into submission. The game intelligently layers on the difficulty while giving you new toys to buy. Solving your way through its multi-floor buildings is quite fun. It is also pretty fun to rocket through the window on the third floor using your amazing trousers, land on a guard and punch his lights out (and keep punching him if you thirst for blood).
Borrowing mission design structure from Sly 2, the heists really help give the game a focus that other GTA games lacked. The heists were so good I wish more of the missions in the game were connected to heists. The character development missions were decent but Franklin kinda got left behind. As usual Rockstar packed this game full of content, there is an insane amount of stuff to do and it all feels very polished, quite the feat.
Bioshock Infinite creates a fascinating world to explore, with a smart fiction. The skyhook makes moving around during combat enjoyable even when its respawn and ammo systems are at odds with each other
So I feel that the Dante from the earlier games wasn't really much of a character, he was more of a cool anime character design full of 'tude. While this Dante retains much of the 'tude, he is fleshed out enough to be called a character now and despite the crazy angels and demons stuff going on I think Ninja Theory succeeds in creating a story with characters worth caring about. This is not the emotional journey that Enslaved was but this is way better than anything Capcom ever achieved. This is also the best playing game that Ninja Theory has ever put out. It pretty much plays like a Devil May Cry game but the new control mapping makes it incredibly fast to switch between weapons. The Angel/Demon modifiers expand the move list and create some interesting mechanics with enemies that can only be damaged by one type of modifier and floors that damage you if your in the wrong type, it's a bit like Ikaruga and it is a ton of fun.
A beautiful game that is fun to play and knows how to pace itself. The papercraft tools are fun to use and this game left a constant smile on my face.
