Games I Played 2013
I'm not going to forget what i played again this year
List items
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January, a holdover from last year. It was really really good.
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January-February. DNF! I played Lost and Damned. It was okay. Then I played Ballad of Gay Tony about 1/5 of the way through and it made me say "FUCK THIS I am done with GTA4. DONE."
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February. Really enjoyed it but I hope they make a sequel that fixes some problems.
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February. Blasting through this again cos I've played a ton of slow ass pondering games since like November. Skipping all cutscenes, not picking up any intel, and running past all the 'spooky' setpieces. Better than I remember!
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February. DNF! I tried to play this a few years ago and was put off by the Invisible Weariness of it all. But I had just played Dishonored and thought it'd be nice to move onto a Thief game and I played the other two already. The constant and lengthy load times (especially when "quick"loading) and annoying hub levels were bad enough, but what really killed it was the clumsy controls and collision detection. I got stuck inside geometry WAY too much, especially for a precision stealth game. I would find alternate routes on thin planks only for Garrett to start vibrating wildly and then fall off. Bummer.
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February. The PC version. A decent portion of silly fun. The only caveat was the dumbass respect meter locking off missions for some reason. The side missions that were partially mandatory because of that were mostly lame or started out cool and then got old really fast. I only found a few that I actually liked doing, which was a little bit less than what was required to win. I enjoyed it quite a bit and got attached enough to my character to jump straight into...
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March. This game really surprised me! The only 'just fun' game in so many years that actually IS just fun and able to stand on its own two feet with only 'just fun' as its core tenant. It's not too dissimilar to SR2 and other GTA clones, though short of Saboteur it is perhaps the most well-realized and best thought out. The economy is well done, I felt myself making painful choices with my money with regards to upgrading weapons, cars, character perks, or investing into properties. They're all important and feel vital, but once the game's missions start getting difficult(ish) enough for a lack of any of the above, the game starts funneling enough cash at you to make your character a demigod and it feels cool. But it is a GTA game so bullet points: The shooting feels really good. The driving feels really good. The missions are, for the most part, really good (albeit linear).
The humor is surprisingly strong and clever. I laughed more than I expected, and came away impressed by the talent behind the humor. Jokes in games tend to be shallow, Family Guy style refs, lazy 'wakka wakka's, and meme regurgitation, but there's some really good, fundamental comedy work on display here. And it's window dressing that really matters too, since so much of it permeates into the gameplay in the form of missions, mechanics, and equipment.
Most of all it's just super refreshing to play a big-budget game where you can tell it was a labor of love instead of compromises and employee meat-grinding.
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March. Because why fuckin not!
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March. DNF. This game is garbage. I'd be able to put up with its jank if there was hidden depth, but all that is hidden is a sub-par single player MMO. GO HERE, FETCH THAT, FUCK YOU. I had more fun fixing it than I did playing it.
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March. Someone modded the levels from this into Sonic Generations and I played it. Pretty fun, but not as good as Generations!
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March. A whole lot of fun, challenging gameplay hampered a bit by its refusal to stick by what it knows how to do. By that I mean the boss battles suck and the plot gets worse the more it diverges from its foundations.
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March. DNF. It's kind of like Sonic but really bad.
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March-April. I like this game even though I had very little fun playing it.
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April. I liked this game when I first played it but had more fun this time! Wow!
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April. DNF. Play one hour of this game you've played the next 60. Boring!
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April-May. Decidedly not boring!
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May. A step back but not out!! i enjoyed.
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May. Hey a fps where you can play Quake PLUS Star Wars! That sounds awesome! Well it's NOT unless you're super into shoddy collision detection and jumping puzzles.
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May. Combat is pretty fun this time around. WHEN THEY LET YOU DO IT. Surprisingly not that often it turns out! More jumping puzzles over instant-death pits, now with more obtuse solutions.
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May. DNF. I got bored really quickly. Kind of like a shoddy Halo except the enemies aren't fun to fight and the weapons aren't fun to shoot and you have a squad that seems more like semi-directed AI than well-trained brothers in arms! bad purchasing decisions re: star wars recently.
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May. It was okay but not great. I don't know why it's open world when it doesnt take advantage of it at all.
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June. It was a good time, even though the driving felt bad. This makes sense.
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June. It's bad but I've only been playing specifically at like 3am so it makes it better
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Juny-July. Not as good as the first one, but a nice game to drown yourself in.
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July-August. Bad PC version. Hurts my eyes like crazy after about 40min. Usually fun, sometimes obnoxious.
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July-August. I played it with the "SIKKMOD" which is partially a graphics thing but also has gameplay tweaks. A lot of stuff like "monsters more like classic doom" "run as fast as in classic doom" etc. Made the game less garbage!!!!!!!
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August. Wow I played a game in 2013 that was released in 2013! The checkpoint save system SUCKS and it stays a little too close to an old game that wasn't THAT good at the time. Boss fights stink, some bits are unfair, and some things just don't work right. But man this is some fun FPSing with some actual level design in it and I can't complain. You just gotta learn to conform to its brand of action. I know it sucks that you gotta learn how to enjoy yourself but come on it's a fine game. SO FAR THE BEST GAME I'VE PLAYED THAT WAS RELEASED IN 2013. GOTY?? We shall see!!!
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August. probably will not finish. it is not good
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August. It's fun! Wait hold on was this game released in 2013??? Oh fuck ohhhhh fuck
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August. I like it. Is my backlog so empty that I'm forced to play current games? Ha ha no.
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August-September. I had tried to play this before and quit because I hated it. I played it on easy this time and now I just think it's mediocre. Whooosh
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September. I've tried to play this game a million times before but I had the patience to put up with its bullshit. People say "it's a good game but a bad deus ex game" which is not true. In reality it is a pretty good deus ex game but a terrible game.
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September. Played up through Nero's half. I'll come back to Dante some other day probably. These kinds of games aren't really my thing but I enjoyed.
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September. Far Cry 2 but better, I guess. Story is... i don't know? Both bad and okay? Who cares.
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September-October. I thiiink I've played enough of this to know that I think it's garbage. But we'll see!
UPDATE: I finished it. It's garbage.
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October. I've played this before, but coming back it shows that it is a really B-Grade effort from Nintendo. Lots of questionable design choices. Many poorly programmed/implemented ideas and imprecise controls. "Difficult" for all the wrong reasons. Galaxy 1 & 2 really makes this look like chump change!
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October. Man what a cool game. MAN!
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October. It seems that Bioshock Infinite put so much hatred in my bones that I retreated to the Nintendo Gamecube in solace. Wind Waker massaged love back into my bones.
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November. The new boss fights are $5 good I'd say
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November. It's somehow less interesting than the base game.
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November. DNF. It's like the uneasy difference between new RE and old RE which means its kind of like RE4 or RE5 except you're in cramped environments and the camera is so zoomed in that enemies just Get you. It could have worked, except so often there's just nothing you can do but take the hit. Especially when they stream in infinite dudes during boss fights. Dealing with problems felt more like luck than skill even when I came out relatively unscathed. There's just not enough room in the environment and the enemies are too mobile and bullet-spongey to do what it asks of you They pile healing items and ammo on you to compensate for the fact that you're all but guaranteed to get "Got" which I think speaks for a certain lack of confidence in their monsters.
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Kind of just playing it off and on. I like it.
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November-December. I started playing Sleeping Dogs but then whoops I Daikatana'd myself instead.
It's bad, definitely. There is a thin layer of John Romero quality to it, where it has that little bit of Doom x-factor, and I think it might have been salvageable (in the patched state I played it in) without the co-op AI. If they had patched out the requirement that Superfly and Mikiko need to be next to you for the level to end I might have a less negative response to the game. In fact, I might have had a positive response!
I will say that despite Daikatana's apocalyptic reputation it's probably less broken than Blood 2, more fun than Unreal, more interesting than Quake 2, less soul-crushing than Duke Nukem Forever, and somehow its long cutscenes about dc comics anime spiritual kung fu samurai cyberpunk dungeons and dragons time travel buddy-comedy-sans-comedy is less ponderous and infuriating than Bioshock Infinite, which remains the worst game I've played all year.
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November-December. Cool but ultimately kinda run of the mill GTA clone.
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December. I never played Separate Ways before and now I did.
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December. Oh I almost forgot to put this here. I liked it.
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December. DNF. Don't like how clumsy it is. Has potential but it just feels bad.
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