2013 is over, and so are my Game of the Year lists. It's been a pretty good year for video games, and a pretty terrible year for everything else. Actually, it decided to give me one last punch in the gut this week and I've had to re-plan my immediate future quite extensively (including such fun tasks as: Registering for classes and trying to find housing two weeks before the semester starts). So my personal life is sort of in the toilet, yet I feel remarkably calm about the whole thing. But you aren't here to read vague references to my life in human space. You aren't even here for games that came out in 2013. In previous years I've occasionally said that this list is a better indication of how I actually play games, and that might not be true this year. If you want the most honest look, you might just want to take a glance at that “Worst of 2013” list again, because that's where most of my old-game playing energy was spent.

ALSO OH MAN WHY IS LIST FORMATTING SO BROKEN. Just follow the numbers and you'll be ok.

Best games of 2013 (that didn't come out in 2013)

	1. Might and Magic: World of XeenI'm sort of cheating on this one, given that World of Xeen is actually composed of Might and Magic IV and V, both separate and distinct halves of a game that interconnects them in a way that I don't think I've seen again. *
	5. Valkyria Chronicles III'll give Valkyria Chronicles II credit: Given how much better the first game supposedly is, I'll probably enjoy the hell out of it. Its PSP sequel has what might be the single most intolerably annoying cast of anime stereotypes this side of a Tales game... aaannnd I still enjoyed it. Weird.*
	2. Super Mario 3D LandWhile I couldn't tell you if this game or Super Mario 3D World is the superior of the two, the second half of 3D Land is exactly the kind of thing that makes Mario games a force to be reckoned with in the first place.
	8. King's Bounty: Warriors of the NorthDon't let the Vikings fool you, Warriors of the North is more King's Bounty with some slight tweaks here and there. And... that's good enough, given that as a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic, this entire series is basically just comfort food.
	6. BayonettaBayonetta crosses my line of tolerance for batshit Japanese insanity with its unrelenting torrent of flashing lights, nonsensical plot, sexual imagery and references to other video games. It's also one of the finest character action games I've played.
	3. Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the BetrayerMask of the Betrayer may have managed to usurp Fallout: New Vegas as my favorite Obsidian title, depending on the day of the week you ask me. *
	7. Sonic & All-Stars Racing TransformedI was actually really surprised how much I enjoyed this game, given that I think Mario Kart is sort of dumb now. *
	9. Far Cry 3Far Cry 3 is the big dumb sandbox I wish Far Cry 2 was all along. The only reason it isn't higher is because I think it wears out its welcome by the time you reach the second island, to not even get into my issues with the story and its continually squandered potential in favor of making me openly hate the protagonist. I might like Blood Dragon more, actually. Still a blast.
	10. The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of SeasonsWhile I didn't get around to Oracle of Ages this year, Oracle of Seasons is a solid Zelda game hamstrung by the limits of what the Gameboy Color was actually capable of. *
	4. Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned CityThe question "Am I a bad enough dude to play these deliberately cruel dungeon crawlers with anime lolis?" was one I struggled with for quite some time. I'm not sure what made this one click, but consider me a fan of Etrian Odyssey. *

I could put images into this blog, but whatever. Who cares?

Nebulous Old Game of the Year: Might and Magic World of Xeen.

I say “Nebulous”, because it doesn't really matter what position a lot of these games are in, and really it's my mistake for numbering it at all this year. For a game that I basically played on and off over the course of four years and two computers, I can say with some confidence that World of Xeen is a fantastic old RPG that holds up surprisingly well. It's a goofy, lengthy dungeon crawl-y experience with some really clever, really crazy environmental puzzles. I don't think I've encountered a game that has a crossword puzzle as part of one of its dungeons. It should be mentioned that a lot of this praise is directed at the Might and Magic V half of World of Xeen, the stronger half and also the one I finished this year. It's not perfect (thus the use of the word “nebulous”), a little too obscure in spots, even when I was referencing a guide, but as far as something I can put a 1 next to on a list, I guess this works. (Really though, the first 3 items on this list are pretty interchangeable and if you want you can pretend that Mario or Neverwinter Nights is actually my old game of the year)

Best Mario Game that isn't that other Best Mario Game on my other list: Super Mario 3D Land

I dunno man. The second half of this game is pretty great. World still is probably better though.

Game most like Planescape Torment – Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer

Oh Obsidian. You may have all of Black Isle's talent, but you have the misfortune of living in an unfair world, where publisher after publisher after publisher treats your requests for additional funds or time like an annoyance, and your games as products that need to be shipped, regardless of how buggy they end up being. You have the best writers in the business, ones that Bioware no doubt envies with their increasing need to shove corny romantic interactions into every orfice of their increasingly mainstream “RPGs”, but you're stuck making smarter, buggier sequels to everyone else's IP. I've said my piece about KotOR 2 elsewhere, but I still think that game has very little business being called a sequel to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or really Star Wars in general, lack of ending and weird deconstructionist themes aside. I've also said my piece about Fallout: New Vegas, which I think in general is a better game than Fallout 3 all around. And... well, I've also said my piece about this next game, namely that it's pretty awesome.

It should be noted that this award is exclusively aimed at the campaign contained in the Mask of the Betrayer Expansion. While the original campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2 is a perfectly decent D&D romp around the Sword Coast (see: Honorable Mentions) and Storm of Zehir is an admirable but questionable effort to recreate an Icewind Dale-like experience in an engine that doesn't really support tactical combat, Mask of the Betrayer sometimes feels like it's the sequel to Planescape Torment, or maybe an alternate universe version of KotOR 2 that I don't sort of hate. It's a game that consists entirely of things that Obsidian does well, with an interesting, low-key plot and some great supporting characters all surrounded by philosophical quandaries . I still think the combat in Neverwinter Nights is pretty mediocre and imprecise, I still think that the camera for this game is straight up awful and I also think that the Soul Hunger mechanic is really, really annoying. I've been tip-toeing around the story and individual events because I think they're really what make the game and it'd be a shame to spoil them. I'll just say that the evil ending, the really evil ending is... pretty great.

The Temple of Elemental Evil award for most sadistic video game: Etrian Odyssey III

I've had this game in my possession for almost two years at this point, so I couldn't tell you what made this one finally click for me after a long while. But here I am, telling you that this deliberately old-school, deliberately sadistic dungeon crawler with an art style that I think is pretty dumb is one of my favorite games of this year, old or no. While I think the term “Grind Treadmill” certainly applies here (except for the part where grinding is pretty trivial for the most part), being overleveled isn't going to do you a whole lot of good against some of the enemies in this game unless you also play it smart. Part of that is me playing with a rather unorthodox party (I always appreciate bum utility/support classes in my dumb RPGs, which is why I had to have a Farmer in my party for the first half before replacing her with a robot that shoots rocket fists) that doesn't contain a dedicated healer, but the fact that I've gotten as far as I have speaks to this game's flexibility (though to be totally blunt: I can't see how you could get very far in this game without a Hoplite, the “tank” class) and that flexibility also extends to character development. There are a lot of viable ways to skill your dudes, be it specialization or broad coverage, compounded by the ability to subclass once you reach the 3^rd area. Maybe I've just become more patient, but this was a game that has impressed me enough to get the two 3DS ones as well.

Most Apologetically Present Game: Valkyria Chronicles II.

Know what? I'll buy that this game might not be on my list if I owned a PS3 and played the first one. Certainly, Valkyria Chronicles II has a lot of the things I associate with Japanese SRPGs that aren't Fire Emblem, namely the part where it's sort of grindy, repetitive and easily exploitable, and as far as I can tell it's generally considered worse than the first game by a decent margin. Still, in those dark first few months of the year, when I was probably failing some of my classes and suffering disastrous side-effects from the medication I was taking then, something about this game really appealed to me. Oh, its characters and plot are the worst. THE WORST, but the tactical gameplay is there in spades, even if the solution to most of your problems quickly becomes “Bum rush the bastards with fencers and maybe a couple of gunners or the tank for support”. But that's the great part! You could theoretically play this game and not in the super-cheesy way that I did to acquire victory. Still, even thinking about that, I think the presence of this game, this high up on the list is proof that most of the old games I played this year weren't quite of the same caliber as the new games I played around with.

Best Kart Racer of the last decade: Sonic and Sega All-Star Racing Transformed

I'm not even joking here. The last time I enjoyed a Kart Racer this much was Mario Kart DS, and this is a way better game than that. This game is really good. The way the cars handle, the way powerslides work, the crazy track designs full of Sega nostalgia for people who owned Dreamcasts (i.e. not me) and can remember when Sega did things.... it all works together quite well, and I'm just talking about playing against the AI. I've had limited experience against humanfolk, but that seems to work pretty great as well! Now if only I had other USB controllers to hook into my computer. That seems like a way I could have fun with others.

Second Best Zelda game I played this year, being that I only played two of them: Oracle of Seasons

Oracle of Seasons and its time-based counterpart Oracle of Ages (which I did not get around to this year) are most notable to me because they're Zelda games that aren't actually developed by Nintendo (Capcom did most of the work). On its own merits, Seasons holds up pretty well, though it probably didn't help that I forced myself to finish it right before I got A Link Between Worlds. However, a couple of things irk me: The ring system is pretty half-baked for items ostensibly capable of helping you, there are only a real handful of useful ones. I feel like there are one or two bum dungeons that drag on longer than they need to or focus too much on stuff like say... platforming with the Roc's Feather/Cape, and finally I think there are certain aspects of the game's scope that are limited by the GBC's hardware and the reliance on connecting the two games together to get the full treatment. Either way, its position on this list is rather dubious, even in the face of...

Honorable Mentions: Quest for Glory 1, Neverwinter Nights 2 vanilla, Syndicate and probably some other things I'll only remember when I post this blog

Quest For Glory was actually number 10 on the original version of this list. As someone who was born after the fall of Communism, I cannot for the life of me understand the appeal of Sierra's brand of old-school Adventure Game. When you tell me that you could accidentally make it impossible to finish King's Quest V hours before it became readily apparent, or that Leisure Suit Larry was a thing that people found funny, or that Police Quest was not supposed to be a hilarious joke, I will shrug and look at you like you are a crazy old man, because you are. As I found out this year, that ire does not quite extend to Quest For Glory, which throws RPG elements (and thus multiple solutions to any given problem) into the usual adventure game mold with mostly positive results. It's still full of accidental death and bad puns, but I might seriously consider playing my character through the rest of the series if only to see that goodwill burn out on some ridiculous, obscure puzzle that no one would ever have gotten without buying a hint book of some sort.

The Original Campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2 is the most straightforward, Bioware-y thing Obsidian has ever done, and for the most part that's fine. It's a pretty archetypical romp around the sword coast, a lot more linear than you'd expect with a plot that you definitely would expect. Part of what redeems it for me is the way that your party members interact, inasmuch as they totally hate each other and would probably strangle the rest in their sleep if not for your presence. It's worth a look at... once, but in the grand pantheon of CRPGs it's really nothing special. It's clear that like the first Neverwinter Nights, the focus is still mostly on the player-created modules, none of which I'll actually play because, despite being the most complete incarnation of D&D 3.5 in a video game I don't think the combat in these games is actually all that fun. You have camera issues and AI scripting issues up the wazoo, which makes party-based combat less fun than it should be. Still, for something that leads up to Mask of the Betrayer, it's alright by me.

It is completely insane that Jeff forced Syndicate onto last year's GOTY list, but on its own merits it was a pretty fun 5 hour first person shooter campaign that I'll never feel the need to play again. The way hacking dudes interacts with shooting makes for a fun time, but if I didn't get it for $5 I think my standards would've been a bit higher. Also, I can barely remember what happened in that game.

And... that's it. I'm done. I was thinking about writing about things that aren't video games, but let's be real, you don't really want to read me ranting about Fullmetal Alchemist, do you? I guess I could rant about Giant Bomb's GOTY choices, but I'll leave that to the rest of you. Happy New Year, or whatever.