My Best and Worst of 2013
By Hailinel 41 Comments
Another year, another yearly awards blog post! It was a very eventful, strange year in games, what with two console launches (Or three, I guess, if you really want to count the Ouya) and a variety of high quality games that made the Game of the Year awards from professional outlets more unpredictable than in recent memory. But this isn't about talking about other awards. These are my awards, and I'm handing them out right now!
Biggest Disappointment: Microsoft, WTF?
This was a hard one to decide on this year. And though I'm not an Xbox 360 owner, nor particularly a fan of Microsoft in general, even I was taken aback by just how they screwed up the Xbox One reveal and the PR disaster that followed. If there's anything truly disappointing about the fiasco, it's that it happened in the first place. Insistence on an always-online connection and DRM scheme and murky details regarding the simple act of borrowing games are just examples of things that made people annoyed with the direction Microsoft was taking their new console. And while some of the complaints veered into the realm of paranoia, justified or not (the NSA spying revelations didn't exactly help Microsoft's plan to make Kinect a mandatory component of the console), the fact remains that they had grossly misread the market and spent the following six months putting the Xbox One on an emergency course correction. A course correction that, to no surprise, has left the console with some very strange quirks. Quirks that could be ironed out in time, given enough firmware updates, but the fact remains that the console wouldn't have been in the state it launched if Microsoft wasn't compelled to spend half a year undoing a large portion of their business plan for the console.
I work at a company that employs a few former Microsoft employees, and to hear them tell it, this is a situation that unfortunately could have been seen coming a mile away. Microsoft has a history of launching products designed with features that they think consumers should want, rather than what consumers actually want. It bit them before and it bit them again. And they wouldn't have learned their lesson this time had the audience the depended on not made it loud and clear that what they were intending to serve up was a huge mistake in the making. I can only imagine what they would have done had the uproar not occurred until after the console launched.
Best New Hardware: PlayStation 4
This award comes with the caveat that I honestly don't have much to say about the PlayStation 4 at the moment, other than it's a very well-designed console. I preordered a console for launch, but it's mostly been collecting dust for the time being; none of the retail games are appealing to me at the moment (shooters, sports, and, uh...Knack), but Resogun is a legitimately fun title, and the PS4 version of Flower shows off the capabilities of the DualShock 4's motion sensing. It's a solid piece of hardware, I'll give it that.
Now I just need more to actually play on it.
Worst Game: Grand Theft Auto V
I know that some of you are thinking I'm crazy right now, but hear me out. For one thing, I did not play that many bad games this year. I certainly played some games that were more underwhelming than others, but I've managed to avoid touching straight-up garbage like Ride to Hell: Retribution, so here we are.
There's a lot to do in Grand Theft Auto V, with a variety of missions and side activities spread across the storylines of three characters, and that's about all the praise I can muster for it. I wrote in a previous blog that prior to Grand Theft Auto V, I hadn't touched a GTA game since Vice City. And yeah, it's still GTA all right, but in the long interim between my days of ramping cars in Not Miami of the 1980s and now, it's apparent that Rockstar's priorities have shifted into the realm of self-indulgence and excess. Los Santos and the surrounding wilderness are comprised of a ludicrously vast amount of space, but much of it is wasted. The writing is consistently and continuously undone by terrible attempts at satire that wouldn't make the cut of a weak episode of South Park. It's not funny. It's horribly written and presented. It's legitimately embarrassing at points. And it's made all the worse for the fact that when the game isn't trying to be satirical, it's actually pretty entertaining. The characters, while not great, are interesting in their own ways, and the storyline is one that could have been amazing had it not been drowned in a septic tank of horrible, cliche, offensive, straight-up moronic attempts at satire and comedy.
The gameplay also has its issues. Trying to decide whether auto or manual aim on guns is a continuous puzzle in and of itself, as the game doesn't seem particularly suited to either. Flying aircraft is both terribly introduced and needlessly complex. The police still react like psychopathic lunatics and prefer throwing as many police cars in your path as they possibly can over anything resembling an intelligent tactic. In a genre that's seen more and more quality entries in recent years, from the Saints Row series to Sleeping Dogs to Lego City Undercover, games that were once "GTA clones" are outshining GTA in just about every way possible save for map size. And that map is just way too damn big.
Grand Theft Auto V is a bloated, god-forsaken mess of triple-A excess. And I haven't even mentioned the broken state that the online component launched in.
Best New Character: Isabelle (Animal Crossing: New Leaf)
I didn't see this coming.
Animal Crossing is a series that does not have characters that are particularly deep or complex. You're never going to find the dramatic pathos of The Last of Us while swapping T-shirts with that hyperactive cat that is your neighbor. That being said, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the most fun I've had with the series since the original GameCube game. And while there is a plethora of reasons why this is the case, one of those reasons is a brand-new character: Isabelle.
New Leaf switches things up by making the player the town mayor, and Isabelle, the secretary at the mayor's office, is always there to assist you. She's the character that greets the player each time the game is booted up and the town is loaded. She helps pick out locations for new construction projects. She's a fluff-headed dog that is always doing her best to help the player keep the town in top shape, no matter the time of day. In a town where the residents move in and out and the shops open and close at various times of day, Isabelle is one of the true constants. She helps give Animal Crossing new life in New Leaf, and for all of this and more, she's my best new character of the year.
Also, she wears bells that jingle when she walks. Trump card deployed.
Best Graphics: Super Mario 3D World
It's about time Mario was in HD blah blah. Whatever your feelings on Nintendo's late arrival to the HD party, one thing's for certain. Super Mario 3D World is a beautiful game. Filled with bright, brilliant color and artistic touches, it's a beautiful game to simply behold, whether it's in the early stages of green grass and blue skies or the final ascent of Bowser's tower. It's yet more proof that when it comes to graphics, horsepower isn't everything.
Best Music (Licensed): Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F
Rhythm games live and die by their music. The Project Diva series, which had seen a number of installments on the PSP before making the jump to the Vita and PS3, is no exception, and the franchise's western debut in Project Diva F has a track list that is wonderful, top to bottom. The game is loaded with an assortment of songs from the silly to the sincere, the light and fluffy to the bizarre and demented. Hopefully, Project DIva F 2nd continues that trend next year.
Best Music (Original): Fire Emblem: Awakening
Fire Emblem: Awakening's soundtrack is my favorite of the year for the simple reason that it compliments the game so perfectly. Whether it be in the barracks or in battle, the soundtrack always has something to fit the mood. Even the DLC battles, which largely thrive on the nostalgia of the legacy characters, have music that fits them perfectly. In a Fire Emblem game that practically has the best parts of every game that came before it, this is the perfect soundtrack for it.
Best Christmas Present: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
This award could also be called "The Best Game I Started Playing Too Late to Award Properly This Year." I normally wouldn't give out an award like this, but A Link Between Worlds is deserving of some sort of recognition, even if I only started playing it this morning. The nostalgia of A Link to the Past is there in full force, but the game doesn't depend on it. It's a fun Zelda game that just happens to be set in the same incarnation of Hyrule as an old Zelda game that also happens to be fun. I'd say more about it, except I've just barely gotten started with one Lorule dungeon under my belt. But yeah, in case you haven't heard, hey, this game is really good and you should play it!
Best Vita Game: Dragon's Crown
This one is sort of a winner by default. I own a Vita, and I own several games for it, but I hardly ever actually use it. I honestly forget I have it sometimes. But Dragon's Crown makes owning one worth it. An RPG beat'em up with beautiful, exaggerated character designs, it feels well-designed as a portable title, and it can be fun to pick up and grind away at. Well, when I remember that I own a Vita, anyway. Maybe I should have gotten the PS3 version? Speaking of which...
Best PS3 Game: Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F
Hell yes. Despite the fact that the game is a port of a Vita game that retains some of the side content that made more sense on the Vita, the core rhythm gameplay and the Vocaloid presentation more than make up for that. It's a game that starts off inviting on the lowest difficulty setting and consistently ramps the challenge up with each notch on the scale. Pair that with the aforementioned soundtrack, and you've got the best game on the PS3 all year.
Best Wii U Game: Super Mario 3D World
Simply put, Super Mario 3D World is the best platformer of the year. Whether you're playing alone or with friends, it's a fun time. A gloriously fun time, and it puts every ounce of itself into being as fun as possible. I honestly haven't had this much fun with a Mario title since Super Mario World. This game is basically everything I've ever loved about the Mario series as a whole in one package, plus more.
Best 3DS Game/Game of the Year: Fire Emblem: Awakening
Speaking of games that are everything I've ever loved about a franchise, plus more, Fire Emblem: Awakening is exactly that. It has just about any and everything I could have asked for in a Fire Emblem game. Intelligent interface improvements, new twists on old gameplay concepts, the return of rarely seen mechanics like marriage and the world map, a fantastic cast of characters, and a fun, engrossing story. That the game has been made more accommodating for newcomers and those scared by the staple of permanent character death with Casual Mode just makes it all the better, even if it is something I'd never use myself.
Like A Link Between Worlds, Awakening makes good use of nostalgia, harkening back to the earlier games without leaning on them. Not just in the DLC, which specifically brings back past characters, but in the main game as well. The story and dialogue both are entertaining and well written, with the large cast of characters able to stand out from each other with their diverse personalities. It's easy to become attached to particular favorites and to have specific pairings in mind, not out of any desire to minmax the second generation cast but because certain characters just seem so right for one another. And the story itself, a tale of multiple wars, battles against evil kings and encroaching Armageddon, is made all the better because of the characters involved.
The strategy at the heart of Fire Emblem is there, and it's as challenging and engrossing as ever. I strove to make it through each battle with all of may units alive, and though the difficulty is on the easier side thanks to the world map and DLC that make leveling and promoting units less of a worry, that isn't to say that the game is a cakewalk. One wrong move can still spell early doom, or at the very least, trigger the desire to reset and try the battle again from the top. It's something I've always enjoyed about the challenge of Fire Emblem, and it's good to see that for all of the modernizing that the series has gone through, old truths still remain the same.
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