Year In Games 2013

[BB]

I�ve played a lot of games this year and wanted to do a little write up of them. I know most of these weren�t RELEASED in 2013 but hey, I�m slow on the uptake!

Steam/PC Titles:

Age Of Empires 2 HD/Forgotten
Had a few teething problems but the devs are working on it all the time and at its heart this is still the same superb game it always was, spruced up for modern PCs. Educational, too- you can learn all about the 200 year war between the Aztecs and the Huns over the land of Texas, and guide Joan Of Arc�s machinegun-toting sportscar to victory. Community-led and MS-endorsed Forgotten expansion adds a slew of new stuff, too.

Sonic Kart Extreme Terraforming Unleashed
Surprise hit of the year for me, wow this game is hella good. The controls are spot on, the track design is really smart, the fanservice is all there but doesn�t get in the way of making it a great game, and the developer is still supporting it and hugely active in the community. Huge recommend, could happily go toe-to-toe with a certain other mascot racer.

Atom Zombie Smasher
Fun zombie evacuation strategy game that doesn�t take itself seriously at all, it sorta begs for being played multiple times. You�re quite at the mercy of the dice early on, sadly, but starting over until you get a solid start isn�t an arduous process.

Botanicula
Super cute plant-em-up, the puzzles aren�t too difficult for the most part but that�s not really the point of this one- EVERYTHING does something and it�s a lot of fun giving everything a tap to see what the effect is. Would be GREAT for youngsters too, though be warned it won�t convince anyone not to be scared of spiders.

Defender�s Quest
I�m not normally a fan of tower defence games but something about this one kept me going for 40 hours. Play it in Hero Mode (without extra recruits) for a very thought-provoking strategic experience. The writing is really good too, genuine laughs. There�s an extensive demo on the developers site or on Steam and you can port your save over from the demo to the full game.

NightSky
Very relaxing physics/platformery kinda game, excels at stop-start gameplay since each level is only a minute long and you can stop at pretty much any time. Not lengthy but I enjoyed it.

Puzzle Quest
Played through this while my computer was broken and only had the laptop to carry on with, it sorta kept me going! Tacking RPG elements onto an otherwise-standard match3 game is a winning formula. Possibly goes on a bit too long, but then again that�s maybe unfair since I couldn�t play anything else.

Splice
THE MUSIC. Like, the game is quite fun too, puzzles like this aren�t really my thing so I didn�t finish the bonus missions, but the MUSIC, jeeeez. Made by the same folks as Auditorium and it�s wonderfully presented.

KOTOR and KOTOR 2
Surprised by how much I enjoyed these! The second has stronger-written characters and a more complicated plot but was sadly released in an unfinished state, the first one is a lot more solidly put together and actually gave me one of the biggest surprises story-wise of all the games I�ve played this year. Knowledge of Star Wars universe helpful but not required, knowledge of D20 combat systems recommended but you�ll probably pick it up.

Super Hexagon
Gonna copypaste my steam rec here. �This is the only game I own that I can start up, play a full game of to its completion, and close again before the Steam Community pop-up has disappeared. Yes, it�s hard, but it�s infinitely playable nonetheless and there�s absolutely zero barriers to the game. You�ll want to sing about it every time you add 5 seconds to your time, and cry and scream when you�re 2 seconds away from the one minute target of each level. It�s the kinda game you can play for half a minute while you�re waiting for a youtube video to download, 2 minutes while waiting for the bathroom, 5 minutes when you want to push your time, and every moment spent in it feels like you�re achieving something- more familiarity with that one pattern that keeps getting you, an extra 0.2 seconds on your record. The music by Chipzel is superb and is available from her website if the game does your head in.�

Surgeon Simulator
Greatly enjoyed it at first, but the game was let down IMO by the ambulance missions which are pretty much complete random luck whether or not they�re possible. The game is supposed to be really fiddly and hard to control, but in the surgery room it can be MASTERED. The ambulance is too random and despite best efforts, if your tools drop out of the back you�re screwed. Was fun while it lasted.

Thomas Was Alone
Charm, charm charm charm. It�s not difficult or taxing but it�s charming like crazy and you won�t believe ow much you come to care for 6 coloured rectangles. Another puzzle-platformer with something of a Lost Vikings style of gameplay to it but far more forgiving.

To The Moon
This is more of an interactive story than a game, but the design and writing are spot on. I completed it in one day-long sitting and was deeply moved. Can�t� really say why because spoilers.

Ys Series (Origin, Chronicles, Felghana)
Everyone who knows me knows I�ve fallen head-over-heels for these games. A series of action RPGs, I think most comparable to Kingdom Hearts inasmuch as there�s more value to learning enemy patterns and countering them than just powerlevelling through. Origin was my point of entry and it�s the one I�d recommend starting with- Chronicles is a remake of the first two games released in the late 80s and it retains that oldskool streak so is a little unforgiving (save often), and I just didn�t enjoy Felghana as much.

DLC Quest
Was over before it began but that�s to its credit I think- they ended it before the joke wore itself out. Look- I spent 50p on it during some sale and got ~2hours fun out of it, so what the heck, go for it.

Dynamite Jack
Couldn�t get into this� it�s sort of a futuristic bomberman-meets-metalgear game where getting spotted means you DIE INSTANTLY. Some enemies can spot you even when you�re hiding and meehhh, it didn�t grab me. Sorry!

Evoland
Evoland is similar to DLC Quest except it sort of accidentally got swept along and fell into it�s own joke. It�s supposed to be a criticism of how JRPGs used to be fun and now are slow grindfests, but in doing so, it� became a slow grindfest and forgot the point it was trying to make. A shame as it starts out really nicely!

McPixel
I don�t really get McPixel. Very Warioware except you can�t really fail, you click a thing, OR you pick a thing up and then click a thing, and it�s either the right combo or it isn�t but there�s very little logic to what the right solution is. Get it wrong and you get another go. To get a gold on each level you actually need to see every possible combination, both right and wrong, which seems a bit of a weak way to pad it out. Easy-going though and would appeal to oddball humour fans. Perhaps one to play with some friends rather than on your own.

Rock Of Ages
Didn�t realise when I bought it this is angled at the multiplayer crowd and the single player mode is quite thin and sort of� soulless? I dunno how to describe it, but I�m pretty sure it�d be a lot more amusing in person on a couch playing against someone you love (and will no longer love by the end of it).

Steel Storm
Prides itself on being a tough-as-nails shooter game but neuters itself by giving you infinite respawns with no loss of progress? That sort of put me off- that kinda thing is fine in an exploration game or if it uses checkpoints, but this is constant combat with no REAL punishment for not combatting well. I lost interest before I could finish it.

Thief, Thief 2
Hooo boy these are old skool. Back when you needed to attend a course at college to learn how to control first person games, there�s about thirty different ways of walking/running/etc forwards. Very popular with others but the archaic controls turned me off.

Thief DS
The engine was revamped for this one and as a result this pampered gamer was able to finish it. Some confusing level design and the AI is easy to game, but the atmosphere is right and the writing of the various groups was great (�I�s beesy wanting him deadings!�) There was one level in particular towards the end that was genuinely a thrill, though. I don�t want to sound too negative as I did have fun with it.

Beat Hazard
Couldn�t play it x_x too flashy. You can turn the flashiness down but not all the way and also apparently that lowers your score, in a game that is all about the score. The developer seems like a lovely chap though so I do recommend checking it out and throwing some money at it if it�s your sort of thing.

Solar 2
I�m afraid this one didn�t really take me, either. The missions seem a little beyond scope? Like you can level up your bit of space dust to an asteroid to a planet all the way up to a black hole and each stage has missions to complete but it feels like you�re never really quite powerful enough to do what�s being asked. More likely I just suck

Sword And Sworcery
The video game equivalent of a person telling you they are a poet and then saying �don�t worry if you don�t GET it, not everyone can be as clever and artistic as I am�. And I mean that literally because the game ACTUALLY SAYS IT- after the first act it cut to a narrator-type suggesting I take a break in case the �psycho-cosmic poetry� is too much for me. That's... not what I want from my games.

Touhou 14
A return to form, in my opinion, after TH13 was a bit on the weaker side. Th14 is hard as BALLS but a lot of fun despite it, and the music�s pretty good too. I�m humming the final boss theme right now. 12 remains the favourite though.



(3)DS Titles:

Rune Factory
All the sleepy �just one more day� fun of Harvest Moon, with added swords and RPG plotline! It�s a bizarre combination but it worked and I spent a long time playing this one. I started to get worn out of it just as I got to the end, too, so that was good.

Pokemon X
Well, what can I say, it�s a pokemon game and you all know what that entails, but this is pretty much pokemon perfected. That�s hard for a gen5 fangirl to say. It�s like they took all the annoying little foibles of past generations and fixed em, somehow, along the way building a beautiful world and a great soundtrack. Storyline is weak compared to generation 5 but that�s really all I can say negatively. (My trainer is so cute she breaks hearts wherever she walks.)

And lastly,

Trauma Centre New Blood (co-op)
It�s probably true of every game, but playing this co-op made it 100x more fun. It was already a recommended title but having a friend to play with makes it fantastic.



How about everyone else, what kept your thumbs twitching this year?

[greed]

My personal game of the year is METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE, it's a fantastic brawler with hilarious writing that takes itself just seriously enough to be exciting and engaging as well as really goddamned funny.

Other big games that really got me this year

Wonderful 101 for the WiiU is well a lot like the above, same company, it's also a brawler just not quite as good as MGR, it suffers a little from an overabundance of non-Brawler segues which aren't as good, also it doesn't quite strike the right balance between funny and serious like MGR did.

Super Mario 3D World is a fucking amazing platformer and the best 3D platformer I've played.

Pokemon X was a lot of fun, it's a Pokemon game but the main improvements are it finally includes a online design that works outside Japan and huge amounts of available Pokemon, including a strong effort to make Pokemon that historically appeared too late for in-story use available early.

Bravely Default is an excellent JRPG in the mold of FF5 with a lot of modern conveniences, such as a very nice online setup that rewards playing with friends. It also has fantastic writing with a lot of humour and emotion. The game is good at getting you to hate it's villains and love it's heroes which for a classic JRPG is very important. This game really makes me feel like I'm playing FF9 or 6 or DQ8 again for the first time. I cannot recommend it enough for EU/Australian NPFers to get now and Americans to get in February (yeah this is what we got as an apology for no SMT4).

GTA5 and AC4 are both pretty fun though both kinda lost my attention before the end. I also lost a lot of time in Spelunky, Starbound and Skyrim.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

I think the only game I really enjoyed this year was the new Tomb Raider, surprisingly. I picked it up on the cheap when I was bored one weekend and it turned out to be far better than I had expected.

Whereas on the other hand, I finally got around to playing Dishonored, got half way, then got bored. Still haven't finished it. Same with Bioshock Infinite. I keep meaning to go back and complete both, but then I just lose the desire and start doing other things. Duno why.

I still never finished all the dlc for Borderlands 2 either. Or did my playthrough 2. Or started my Mechromancer run. Game was long, 3rd dlc was a chore, don't fancy doing it all again solo.

Other than that the only other thing I've actually played this year was Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014, which has kept me going for like 6 months now, and has gotten me interested in proper M:TG (I have like, 6 decks now).

So all in all, a mixed year for me. I found myself getting into Magic the Gathering, but found console fps' to be somewhat lacking. Not looking forward to much for next year either, seeing as I have no interest in any of the new consoles.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Hawk

don't fancy doing it all again solo.

I'd wager that's the problem, and I don't mean that as a criticism of you. The game is great, don't get me wrong, but it's really best when played with friends. The replay-ability dies out easily.



I actually just got the new/latest Lara Croft Adventure myself, and I am having a great time. I think playing it has solidified for me that I definitely need to go get a used PS3 or something and play through Uncharted, like I have been wanting to for a while.

[Loyal]

So, what games did I get (or start playing) this year...

Awakening is easily in the top three among all Fire Emblem games. It's got a great level of challenge, while having accessible, optional features that make it playable to newer or less-skilled players. You can play it casually, but there's also great potential for min/max tweaking with the Second Seal and parent/child mechanics. The player-character feature implemented in New Mystery of the Emblem has been properly implemented. Finally, there's just the right amount of fanservice (and I'm not talking about Tharja or Cherche) for fans of past games. The only thing I feel is missing is the GBA generation's instant-quicksave-when-you-shut-off-the-system feature, though how feasible such a thing would be on the 3DS is not something I can confirm.

Saints Row 3 was crazy fun and satisfies all my destructive catharsis itches. In fact, it does it so well that between SR3 and GTA:SA, I doubt I'll ever need to buy another game of its kind again unless they come up with something revolutionary. Too much of a good thing?

Kid Icarus: Uprising has great aesthetics, great voice acting, great gameplay, great music, great everything. Give me more.

Creeper World 3 is a strategy game I've been anticipating for the past couple years, and it does not disappoint now that it's finally out. While it retains some of the pacing problems of past games (in that once you turtle through the initial crushing resistance the gameplay becomes a bit of a grind), there are much more offensive options at your disposal that greatly raise the skill ceiling and reward you for aggressive-yet-skillful play. A delight for speedrunners.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is a strategy game whose great potential has been, perhaps permanently, marred by loads of bugs and a number of balance issues that the dev team has been tragically slow in even addressing, much less fixing.

I wish I had people to play Magicka with. Being a late arrival, it seems impossible for me to get a proper appreciation of the game clumsily faffing about by myself.

Rogue Legacy is probably one of the best designed metroidvania games of all time, and certainly among the best that I've played. Any game with such intuitive and tight controls is okay by my book.

[mauve]

Let's see... What games did I play this year?

Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed: As earlier mentioned, a surprisingly fun little racing game which I'm enjoying immensely. It's not really built for people who don't have controllers, and it makes zero attempts to explain keyboard controls for those of us who don't, but it's not unplayable. Some connection issues when playing with friends, but still enjoyable.

Batman: Arkham Origins: Anyone who knows me as a gamer knows I adore the Arkham series of games. Origins is... a bit of a mixed bag, really. Its PC port is quite buggy-- not unplayably so, but still very noticible and occasionally to a point where it can affect your game. I'm not in the video game industry, and I don't know all the circumstances leading up to the game's release so I really can't judge, but considering that SO MANY of the game's textures and maps were directly imported from Arkham City, I'd expect the company to have had more time to do some debugging and playtesting. I've had to do a few missions multiple times for weird glitchy reasons, like crucial enemies respawning after I take them out, ruining my mission progression mid-mission, or the actions mapped by default to the right mouse button fail to work. I'm just sayin', if you're gonna have a boss fight that's almost EXCLUSIVELY comprised of counter attacks and/or gadget use, you'd better make damn sure that gadgets and counter-attack mechanisms ACTUALLY WORK 100% OF THE TIME. Aside from these issues, though,I'm still enjoying the game. Combat and stealth missions are still really fun, the characters are likeable (although Batman's motivations and actions sometimes seem a little "off." Still, I guess you can hand-wave it away by saying Origins takes place early in Batman's career), and it still feels like an Arkham game, albeit a slightly toned-down one. I was a little disappointed to see that Joker is the real villain ohhh nooooo, but I really wasn't expecting otherwise. I mean, he's a fun villain when he's well-written, but I'm just a little bored of him being front-and-center by now. On the plus side, my favorite villain, Riddler (sorry, it's Enigma now), is back and is as chatty as ever. All in all, I still like the game and will likely play it obsessively until I beat it or it glitches itself to death.

Gunpoint: A short but fun and well-written little stealth-puzzler. Great characters, great atmosphere, fun gameplay, awesome soundtrack. Very short, which is a bit disappointing, but well worth the price of admission.

Dear Esther: Absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It's not for everyone, as it's less of a game and more of a walk-through abstract story, but it's deeply emotional. Every time you play, you have a chancxe of recieving different parts of the story. And every part of the story can change your overall perception of what's going on. Who are you? WHo is the narrator? Is this real or a dream? It never directly tells you, and as such your interpretation of the story will likely differ from other people's. It's funny how something so abstract can be so emotionally moving.It's -nly about 2 hours long, though.

The Stanley Parable: Like Dear Esther, this is more of a story than a game. Unlike Dear Esther, though, this game is hilarious, ominous and absurd all at the same time, where your story depends on your actions instead of a randomized algorithm. Sometimes, your narrator is a friend. Othertimes he's foe. Still other times he's just as lost and confused as you are, and occasionally he's a she. There really is no clear answer to what The Stanley Parable "is."It lacks the emotional sucker-punch of Dear Esther but makes up for it in humor, intrigue, and it's encouragement of exploration "just to see what happens." It's fairly short and can be a bit boring after a while, though.

Mark of the Ninja: A stealth/action game by Klei. I was surprised at this game's depth and involvement at first, since it looks like it was done in Flash and designed for tablets. I was wrong. This game has great sneaking mechanics and nifty stealth kill combos. The latter surprised me at first- the art style didn't look like something that would accomodate a ninja stabbing a sword through someone's chest. It's a fun game, although I personally find it hard to play for long periods of time without finding it tedious. I still recommend it though.

Don't Starve: Another game by Klei. I had never heard of this studio prior to this year, and then I end up playing 2 very different games from the same studio.Don't Starve is a wilderness survival game where you must use science and magic to stay alive in a demonic land created by the mysterious Maxwell. It has a really neat art style, very sketchy ink-drawing 2D figures in a 3D environment. It's fun, but very unforgiving. If you die, you have to start again from square one in a completely new randomly-generated world.

Mass Effect (1): Eh, it's KOTR with no lightsabers and a shitty date-sim added in. GO AWAY KAIDEN AND LIARA, NO ONE LIKES YOU.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep: Very funny writing and a surprisingly fun concept. Not what I expected for as Borderlands DLC, but a pleasant surprise. Never finished it, since I'm waiting to play it in co-op with my sister.

Torchlight II: I got bored of the original Torchlight, but have not yet had that problem with the sequel. Fun upgrades, nice variety in levels.


Penny Arcade's Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4: I liked the first 2 installments from Hothead. I found 3 to be a little tedious and much less funny. 4 is the middle point between the Hothead games and 3- It's got funny moments, and the gameplay is fun, but it felt a bit lacking in some story areas.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

I'd wager that's the problem, and I don't mean that as a criticism of you. The game is great, don't get me wrong, but it's really best when played with friends. The replay-ability dies out easily.

Yeah, it is a bit of a slog on your own. A couple of friends kept saying they were going to get it back when it was released and I was hoping we'd all play it through together, but then they never did

Got in a few hours with a couple of npfers over the course of the main storyline, which was great, but other than that it was a bit of a slow paced solo affair for myself. I think I was even the last person on the forums to complete it if I remember. Didn't help that it was a much longer and harder game than the original, which if I'm honest I kinda preffered. Original Siren was the best Siren.

[BB]

Originally Posted by greed

Bravely Default is an excellent JRPG in the mold of FF5 with a lot of modern conveniences, such as a very nice online setup that rewards playing with friends. It also has fantastic writing with a lot of humour and emotion. The game is good at getting you to hate it's villains and love it's heroes which for a classic JRPG is very important. This game really makes me feel like I'm playing FF9 or 6 or DQ8 again for the first time. I cannot recommend it enough for EU/Australian NPFers to get now and Americans to get in February (yeah this is what we got as an apology for no SMT4).

Bravely Default is on my "get this in 2014" list after trying the demo and feeling like I was playing what modern-day Final Fantasy would be if it'd kept the FF3(j) way of doing things.

Originally Posted by Mauve Mage

Mark of the Ninja: A stealth/action game by Klei. I was surprised at this game's depth and involvement at first, since it looks like it was done in Flash and designed for tablets. I was wrong. This game has great sneaking mechanics and nifty stealth kill combos. The latter surprised me at first- the art style didn't look like something that would accomodate a ninja stabbing a sword through someone's chest. It's a fun game, although I personally find it hard to play for long periods of time without finding it tedious. I still recommend it though.

Playing through this one right now, actually! I got a controller for christmas and it's turned MOTN from "this is pretty good" to "wow I think I'm actually a ninja"- the controls are so tight it's like it's reading my mind, not my inputs.

[Red Fighter 1073]

Gunpoint: I just bought and finished this game yesterday and wow I haven't had an amazing game experience like that in a long time. Bit of shame that it's so short, but the story, the music, the gameplay, and puzzles all came together to create this amazing package. The dialogue was pretty clever and the achievements list was really funny at certain points.

[MuMu]

Divinity II was a great WRPG that isn't afraid of being a bit mean to the player, with no quest markers for side quests or shining ingredients. It's writing it top notch, going full aware of it's contents instead of just a dark, gritty, serious setting. Shame about the ending, but most of it's long playthrough highly entertained me.

Fortune Summoners was another one with a bad ending(And no sequel in sight) which made up for it in charm and the great, challenging gameplay.

Dishonored made up for the lackluster Bioshock Infinite, with an actual choice regarding whether you'll be or not a murdering machine and viable paths for the different playthroughs. The setting was also good, not going with the Steam/Cyberpunk trend but instead making up a bit of it's own.

Deponia and others point-n-clicks from Daedelic reminded me of how fun it is the solve puzzles with absurd logic leaps.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was a solid on-rails shooter, showing that the genre doesn't need to be like CoD.

Zeno Clash had an unique and very bizarre setting and excelled in the first-person beat'em up genre, one not often thrived in.

DARK SOULS was.