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Psychohead

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My Top Ten Games of the Year for 2013

God, just, fuck you 2013.

Ah, that's not fair, come back. Come back. Look, it's nothing personal, okay? Some yucky shit happened this year. You did have some pretty compelling video games, I must admit. Hell, it's a testament to the strength of your collection of games that I sweated bullets trying to get the this list down to ten. But if there's one thing you've taught me, 2013, it's that nothing lasts forever and not everyone survives. So here, I take a moment to mention those that just didn't quite make the grade. (Or you can just skip down to the list if my melodrama is scaring you off.)

Thomas Was Alone would be on this list if it hadn't been so inconsiderate as to have been released in 2012. Fantastic fucking game, go play it.

Volgarr the Viking, Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, and Monaco were brief but passionate affairs. Nothing that shatters the paradigm, but damn fun regardless.

Injustice: Gods Among Us was the best fighting game I played that wasn't Skullgirls, and god damn is Skullgirls amazing.

Don't Starve was often too stressful, making it more fun to watch than play, but I think that speaks volumes about its quality. It's what I always wished Minecraft was. That game hates you, which makes bending it to your will all the sweeter.

Pokémon Y seized me for a hot minute and just did not let go. Congrats, Nintendo, you made me realize I have some nostaliga for Pokémon.

Payday 2, well... bank robbing is still fun.

Metro: Last Light wasn't quite as strong in the story department as its predecessor, but hot damn did it play better. And it proves once again that if you want someone to tell you about man's inhumanity to man, ask a Russian. Love it.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is, perhaps, a bit manipulative, predictable, and rote. But the point it tries to make is good, and the way it makes that point at one very critical part of the game... Man, it's the sort of thing only video games can do, and I love it for that.

The Last of Us missed this list by a hair's breath. Strangely, when I got to the end of it, I didn't feel like it had shaken me to my core or provided a revelatory Moment of Truth. But I did sit back and appreciate it for what it was: damn good art. You were damn good art, game, and stories told both inside and outside of video games could stand to take notice of what you did this year.

Oh, and that Tomb Raider reboot? A worthy successor. Welcome back, Lara! (Er, again.)

What follows, then, is a list not necessarily of the objectively best games of the year. This list is irrevocably tainted by the foul hand of personal importance. Some are here on their own merits, and some because they speak deeply to me personally. And so, without further ado:

List items

  • Narrative. Metanarrative. Game design. Meta game design. Philosophy. Comedy. Horror. Tragedy. Meta comedy. Meta meta. Anti-meta unphilosophy.

    The Stanley Parable is the sort of thing I wish I had the chops to write. The jokes are perfectly tuned, the presentation perfectly crafted, and the acting perfectly perfect. It spoke to me as a gamer, as a writer, as a human being, and as someone utterly unimportant. Or maybe it was the most important person in the world? It's rather hard to tell, sometimes. This game transcends being a game, transcends being a story, transcends basically everything. It is truly a unique piece of art. Go play it.

  • Oh, art game, you are so art game.

    Sometimes, art games get onto lists because they make you cry. That's not why Gone Home is on this list. While perhaps not the most original story in the world, the tale Gone Home tells is an incredibly personal one.

    And I don't mean that just in terms of what it means to its creators, though "labor of love" has never rung truer than it does here. No, the world it presents and the story it tells is one I'm all-too familiar with. I was that kid. In the 90's. In the Pacific Northwest. And... Well, I hesitate to say too much, as like The Stanley Parable, its best enjoyed by going in cold. But I saw more of me in this game than I've seen in most.

    The story it tells is small and it's beautiful, and it gives me hope for this medium that I so truly love to become something more than Bob Johnson Saves the Universe 2.

    Also? It made me cry.

  • Okay, okay, enough hoity-toity crap. Here's Rogue Legacy, and it is a fucking blast to play. And that's all it is. And that's all it needs to be. Sure, it's a neat twist on the Castlevania forumla, infusing it with some roguelike-ish DNA. Mostly, though? It controls wells, it looks and sounds superb, and it's really god damn fun to play.

  • Yup. Frankly, chummer, it's a wonder this game isn't in my number 1 slot.

    So, 2013 was a year of pretty severe nostalgia, and few things are quite as nostalgic for me as Shadowrun. I admit, it's not the best RPG out there. It's solidly average, if I was to be completely honest. But this isn't about honesty. Shadowrun was a gargantuan part of my life growing up. It didn't matter that it was mediocre, because every time I played it, I was 12 again. (Except for that one part where I shot my old boss. That, admittedly, was pretty fucking weird.)

    It's also just such a weird damn thing: Kickstarted into existence, delivered as promised, and not utter crap. Admittedly, FTL beat it to that punch, but I think it's safe to say Shadowrun was a bit higher in profile. So it's good to see that maybe our crowdfunding-obsessed new world may indeed turn out for the best.

    I'd like to believe this was the vanguard of a cyberpunk second wave, but... Eh, it's enough that Fate saw kind enough to let me jack in and punch deck just one more time.

  • Aheh, yeaaaah. If I was playing a multiplayer game this year, it's fair odds it was MechWarrior.

    Look, Shadowrun is probably the only Dumb Thing From Childhood I hold more dearly than MechWarrior, so of course it's on this list. What can I say? I loved FASA. BattleMechs and cyberdecks are kinda exactly the sort of dumb shit a young, lonely nerd eats right up.

    The game has its problems, to be sure. Frankly, I hesitate to say it's even *really* finished, as PGI desperately needs to do some more work on it. But aside from pushing *all* the right nostalgia buttons, I honestly feel that MechWarrior did once again prove that when it comes to "game where you actually feel like you're stomping around in a 65-ton weapon of mass destruction," there really is only one king of the genre. If they iron out some of the kinks, I could see myself playing this one for a very, very long time.

  • Oh good, time to get bummed out, again. Few art games have solid mechanics. Usually, they get by on being deep or clever or really, really fucking sad. Not so with Papers, Please, even if it *is* all three of those things. I mean, The idea of "paperwork as gameplay" sounds insane on the surface, but... somehow, this game makes it work.

    I hesitate to say I "enjoyed" Papers, Please, because by design the game is all about what it's like to be ground down by the relentless bureaucracy of a fascist state. And I don't think I'll be going back to it. But it's the sort of "art game" I'd love to see more of, because it's marriage of message and mechanics is the new gold standard.

    Glory to Arstoska!

  • God damn, this game was sexy. Gunpoint pushed a lot buttons, definitely: the story, the setting, the writing, the music -- good fucking fuckery the music! They're all right up every one of my alleys. But, ultimately, what strikes me about Gunpoint is its mechanics.

    It's a puzzle/action game that was, quite frankly, like nothing I'd ever played before. Indeed, if I was to compare this to anything, it would be Portal. Short, sweet, with tight controls, and a simple mechanic that goes to some very awesome places.

    That this is the creator's debut effort seems impossible, and if this is where he's *starting* from, I cannot wait to see what comes next.

  • I'd like to think I'm the sort of person who can admit when they are wrong. When this game was announced, I was the DMC veteran sitting high atop the hate bandwagon, bullhorn in hand, screaming about how awful it would be. And I was dead wrong.

    This new Dante is not my Dante, but his game is still completely recognizable. It could stand to take itself a little less seriously, but fuck me if it wasn't a hell of a lot of fun to play.

  • Divekick is not the fighting game I played the most this year. It's probably not even the best fighting game I played this year. But Divekick is one thing above all else: pure. Divekick is pure like Pac-Man is pure. Divekick is an entire genre boiled down to what's amazing about that genre. Divekick explains beautifully that the emperor's of the fighting genre are not wearing clothes, and that you really only need two buttons to see what's so incredible about fighting games.

    Also, that it's *really* funny certainly doesn't hurt either.

  • This one is kind of an odd duck. On the one hand, with the subject matter it touches on, it does *only* that: touches. It doesn't really dig deep. And, in some insidious ways, falls prey to some of the things it seeks to condemn. And on the other hand, well... That it's willing to talk about this stuff in a fucking *video game* -- a big-budget, high-profile video game with an extremely valuable franchise name to boot -- is kind of amazing. So yeah, maybe it falls short of its mark. But seeing one of the Big Boys even try is kind of incredible if you think about it.

    Plus? It's gorgeous, and the soundtrack is at once both clever and and delightfully well made.
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