GOTY 2013
My personal favorites from this year.
List items
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Fire Emblem: Awakening is without a doubt my favorite game I played from this year. I had played a few Fire Emblem titles in the past but they were always either too obtuse or too difficult for me to get into. But with Awakening the appeal of the series finally clicked and I spent the beginning of this year obsessing over this title. The game’s presentation was a major step forward from any Fire Emblem game I had played before it and while the story was simple I found it incredibility engaging thanks to the huge cast of likable characters. Awakening also caused a mini Fire Emblem craze within my family and circle of friends. Everyone was playing the game at the same time, which seldom happens, and we even began playing older entries in the series, such as Genealogy of the Holy Wars. Even now I sometimes have to force myself to not play Awakening so I can focus on other games, which is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give.
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2013 was perhaps the only year I completely skipped out on playing any blockbuster titles. None of them really caught my interest and if The Last of Us had not been developed by Naughty Dog I would have skipped out on this zombie shooter as well. However The Last of Us turned out to be much more than just another zombie game, with its fantastic story, deliberate pace, and top-notch presentation. This game is not just one of my favorite titles from 2013 but perhaps one of the best games I’ve played this generation.
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2013 was also the year of Rune Factory for me. I’ve never enjoyed the Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing franchises but for whatever reason I fell in love with Rune Factory after finishing the third entry on the DS earlier this year. Something about the combination of dungeon crawling, farming, and just hanging out with your neighbors really appealed to me. The fourth game introduced a lot of great improvement, such as a nice series of tutorials and contained a much more interesting plot than the third entry. Unfortunately the game's developer, Neverland, has recently filed for bankruptcy so this may be the last entry in the series. But if Rune Factory 4 does end up being the franchise's swan song then it ended on a very high note.
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Attack of the Friday Monsters has almost no gameplay, a fairly low key story, and it may seem super boring to some people. However I’ve never played a game that is as relaxing, charming, and nostalgic as this title. There are not a lot of games that can make you pine to be a 10 year old again quite like Friday Monsters.
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Real good.
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Tales of Xillia is another title I played with my family, as in I played it while my younger siblings watched. The game has some pretty bad pacing problems and the presentation is dated but I still managed to get really invested in this RPG. My investment had a lot to do with how much my siblings loved it but I found the game’s cast of characters and gameplay to be incredibly fun.
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I had a lot of problems with Duel Destinies. Many of the plot lines introduced at the end of Apollo Justice are almost completely ignored and most of the returning characters are underutilized, such as Trucy. The gameplay is also far more limited then it’s been in the past, with you not being able to investigate every background, and the title’s single innovation, the Mood Matrix, is very underwhelming. However despite all these problems I still ended up enjoying Duel Destinies. The game tells a fun self-contained mystery that has a lot of well place foreshadowing in earlier chapters. Almost every new character is memorable and the new polygonal presentation is just as beautiful as the 2D artwork the series is known for. Duel Destinies is not the best Ace Attorney game but it is certainly far from the worst.
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This entry barely counts as a 2013 game since Danganronpa came out in Japan in 2010 and the Vita release will come out in America in 2014. But I did play Danganronpa in English this year thanks to the fan patch by Project Zetsubou that was released back in June. While the premise of a group of people trapped in a place is beginning to get a little old, Danganronpa manages to stay fresh through shear insanity and confidence in its odd presentation. It was a lot of fun and I will certainly be replaying it when the Vita version comes out.
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Many video games have told their stories through the player exploring an environment; Half-Life and Bioshock come to mind. But what makes Gone Home so interesting is that it has the balls to focus its entire game around just exploring without any shooting, puzzle solving, or really any other type of gameplay. It’s amazingly well done and I really felt like I learned something new about the Greenbriars with every nick-knack I examined. My only beef with the game are Sam’s audio journals that honestly made the story feel like a silly Hallmark movie. I wish the game had trusted me to discover that story on my own through the environment instead of pushing it in my face.
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