Just a recap of the previous category winners: PART 1
2013’s 2012 Game of the Year-Chivalry: Medieval Warfare (Deadliest Warrior)
Favourite Mod I Played-Ultimate Apocalypse (Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War-Soulstorm)
Diamond in the Rough-Volgarr the Viking
Best Soundtrack that is not Metal Gear Rising’s OST-Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
And now for Part 2's awards!
Backlog Shame-Super Mario 3D World/The Wonderful 101/The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
What a year Nintendo has had. Refusing to be drowned under the mass coverage and hype surrounding the next-gen launches and subsequent advancements from Sony and Microsoft, the big N released a ton of great stuff for their platforms; Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate, Fire Emblem: Awakening, The Wonderful 101, Wind Waker HD, Super Mario 3D World and A Link Between Worlds all came out this year, not to mention we have a new Bayonetta, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country and Smash Bros. on the way in 2014, all of which will only be available on Nintendo platforms. Whilst it might seem Nintendo are in dire straits, I think they will manage to stay afloat in this ever evolving industry on sheer IP brand recognition and quality alone. You could honestly make a strong case that the best platform of 2013 was the WiiU or the 3DS.
Sadly, I’ve yet to touch the 3 games that have “won” this “prestigious” award, despite owning all of them. I am not proud it has taken me this long to start giving a damn about Nintendo again. My loathing of the WiiU Gamepad (my problem lies with how far apart the analog sticks are) has kept me from turning on the console much this year, but I decided to buckle the fuck up and get myself a Pro controller. I am giddy to finally justify a WiiU purchase after an entire year.
Hey, I Enjoyed a Fighting Game-Injustice: Gods Among Us
I feel as though I need to start out this segment with a long rant and ragging against Killer Instinct, especially after hearing how accessible it was meant to be to someone like me, A.K.A the antithesis of a fighting game aficionado. The minute I laid eyes on the quarter-circle-forward motions for specials, I just heavily sighed inside. I couldn't even finish the extensive tutorial which seemed to just go on and on and on. I have my reasons, mainly my left thumb which has the thing that’s meant to be in the middle of a finger off to the right. This means that bending my left thumb in the middle is impossible and that has a large effect on my ability to pull off a quarter-circle-motion commands.
Now a fighting game without such stuff is more up my street, but the fact that Injustice had a DC roster didn’t exactly hurt matters. MK9 is probably my favourite fighting game of this thus far brief decade because of the way you use binary directional inputs along with a face button press to pull of the specials. The tutorial was short and yet it managed to teach me all I needed to know to enjoy the game in a short period of time.
Once again, nobody can come close to doing Story Modes in fighting games quite like Neatherealm can. It was highly enjoyable in MK9 and that tradition continues into Injustice. The icing on the cake, however, is the fact that the special moves for your character are displayed as soon as you pause the game, not to mention you can bring up specific moves and combos in the practice mod that allows you to hone your skills and remember specific and effective moves as well as learning the timing for them. Add to that the 200+ mini-game mission style S.T.A.R Labs mode and you’ve got a fighting game bursting at the seams with content.
Developer of the Year-Platinum Games
Not one, not two, but a trifecta of top-notch games this year from P*. That sounds silly coming from me because I have played very little of Anarchy Reigns (still love listening to the soundtrack from time to time) and have yet to boot up The Wonderful 101 (I will have to get round to it), but fuck it, my list my rules, or lack thereof if that wasn’t apparent already.
In truth, it’s mostly the effort the team did on Metal Gear Rising. This game was destined to fail; Short development time, previously scrapped project handed off to new studio, taking a well-known and beloved franchise and putting it into new clothes that we weren’t so sure were gonna fit. Somehow, they pulled through in a big way, but we’ll get to more MGR in a later category or two.
Game I Wish I Could Bring Myself to Finish-Saints Row IV/Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
Yes, it’s a tie again, but only 2 games this time.
I was thoroughly pumped to get my grubby mitts on the latest escapades of the Third Street Saints, but as fate would have it, the game didn’t seem to want to share the love back. What I mean by that is, if you remember back to release week, where there was a crippling bug for the PC/Steam version of the game in which weapons would glitch out and not work properly and save data could become corrupted. It pretty much meant that me and the friend I was playing through the game with didn’t want to go near it until the all clear was signalled. Surprisingly enough, our data had survived unscathed through the patching process, but by then it was already too late. We had lost interest very quickly, mostly being miffed at the fact that I had convinced him to get the game on PC since all the reviews made the strong point that the console versions ran like ass.
From time to time, I still like to boot up the game and have a blast traversing the digital cityscape with the fantastic set of powers on offer. Alas, I had already spoiled most of the game’s major plot moments for myself and as such, have lost yet more motivation to plough through the story. I imagine I will find the time and vigour to finish what the President and Keith David started.
This brings me to the second game of this category, which may not feature Keith David or cultural alien overlords, but most certainly does feature dragons and their dogmas. Yes, I did arrive a year late to whatever the fuck kind of crazy party you want to call Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma, but hey, that meant more content for me, more content that I never even got around to playing.
You see, I have a very Jekyll/Hyde relationship with this particular title. One on hand, I think the combat and the mechanics surrounding it, such as the beast riding, clear class distinctions, pawn data gathering, boss scale and difficulty are all top notch. However, the rather bland themes and story, the letterboxing and performance issues, the endless pawn spewing nonsense and the tedious travelling drop the game down a couple of notches. That last one is indeed my biggest problem with Dragon’s Dogma and from what I have gathered, it was even worse in the game’s original release. Seriously, imagine if in an open world game, there were no means of transport besides hoofing it on foot and the only fast travel points were between the starting area and the main city hub. Sure, you can use items to set manual spawn points, but they cost money. Imagine you’re playing Dark Souls, and you get the Lordvessel for killing Ornstein and Smough, but you can only use it to warp back to Firelink for the time being. If you want any more warp points, you have to spend souls and get more Lordvessels. If you want to warp to any key location, you have to find these rare items that are in short supply hidden around the world and leave them where you want to come back to. That’s not taking into account that Dragon’s Dogma is a more traditional open world game and the map is quite expansive, whereas Dark Souls is essentially 3D Metroidvania.
Despite everything I’ve said, I did manage to make it far into DD: DA, all the way up to the supposed final quest to go slay the dragon, and yet I would still need to go and no all the new Dark Arisen content afterwards, assuming I’m a high enough level to tackle the challenges that await me; once again, likely that I will return to this game, but not anytime in 2013.
Log in to comment