I think this list is final...
2013 saw a lot of great games, both AAA and indie. So many of them evoked feelings so different than anything else we'd experienced before. Some revitalized old tropes, and some were just downright awesome. 2013 was an amazing year for games.
The "I Shouldn't Restrict Myself to 10 Games" Awards
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
I ain't got no tainted love. God only knows where we'd be without games like BioShock. Will the circle be unbroken in a timeline when Irrational never looks beyond the sea? Color me a fortunate son since they have in ours. Everybody wants to rule the world and us girls just wanna have fun. When I was playing BioShock: Infinite it certainly felt like I was doing both, making me shiny happy people.
Forget what you know about video games and apply what you know about life. Life is the puzzle, with wisdom come solutions.
Brothers plays to the medium’s strengths and weaknesses in ways few games do. It passes with dim flying colors, because every interaction matters and it's constantly building up to create something that only works as well as it does because of its medium. It’s a fairytale in the classic sense of the word, and its grimmer moments are complimented by moments of wonder, excitement and power. That juxtaposition makes the storybook world of Brothers worth exploring.
The zombie trope feels kind of tired at this point, but The Last of Us' take manages to stay interesting the whole way through, partially because the gameplay feels connected to its story. Resources are always limited and sometimes you might find yourself forced into bad situations fitting of its world. But it's the bold resolution in a tired post-apocalyptic zombie scenario setting that makes The Last of Us stand out as Naughty Dog's best effort yet.
Who knew that opening up Hyrule was the answer for the Zelda formula? There is a drawback to getting all the key items up front. The game gets a little easy as you start wrapping up, because they have to scale the difficulty to suit any order of operations. However, by giving you all of the major items at the start, combat can easily be tuned to your style and as I said, you can go where you want to go, without the game holding back like so many Zelda games have been wont to do. It might borrow pretty heavily from A Link to the Past, but it is as fresh as a Zelda has been in a long time. The painting element ties into everything in fun ways, and the ending is pretty great. Also, that dark world theme remix is my jam.
It's like if Castlevania was turned into a Rogue-like. I like Rogue-likes. I love Castlevania. It's a winning combination only dragged down by bummer boss battles, but is that a big deal when so much else is going for it. It's fast and loose, and unlike most Rogue-likes there is a sense of progression, so when you fail you at least got something out of it.
Spontaneous intrigue turns an apathetic shuffling of papers into an empathetic exercise of principle.
The "Assassin's Creed" parts of this game are pretty par for the course, but the pirate stuff... oh man the pirate stuff... It's so good I spent hours sailing around singing shanties with my crew.
