by mento
A list of games that are good. They are not bad. Phew, check out this super technical vernacular I'm swinging around like a deadly weapon. Hoo boy.
The list is now finalized. I don't think any of these remaining Indie games I'm sitting on are likely to break into this top ten. Or top twenty as the case appears to be.
Showing 1-10 of 20 items
It's a hell of a thing to look at this list of 20 games and declare Sleeping Dogs to be the best one. It's a GTA clone (and I mean through-and-through plot and content-wise, not just its superficial similarity as a city-based sandbox game) with an eastern flair that at certain points feels incomplete due to the necessity of curtailing an already overlong development period. However, few games provided the level of entertainment Sleeping Dogs did, and sustained that level for a considerable number of playing hours. Many of the games on this list were "important" rather than endlessly entertaining, or were fun but way too short (as is always the unfortunate case with the downloadable/Indie set). That the game continues to show its true strength with its imaginative DLC, some memorably hilarious Quick Look moments courtesy of the incorrigible Vinny Caravella and perhaps the year's best combat system in lieu of a Rocksteady Batman game to trump it, I'm pretty content with my decision to make this my top dog.
Dust's very existence is a significant accomplishment that cannot and should not be understated or ignored when discussing the game. However, it did not require this additional meritorious meta tidbit to elevate it to its position on this list. As an Indie Metroidvania, it had plenty of antecedents to surpass yet nevertheless did so with aplomb, with its fantastic soundtrack, animation, combat system and story. It got absolutely everything right; no other video game that I can think of has benefited this much from having a singular creative source. It hits number two because I legitimately cannot find a single fault with it. (Which might make one wonder why it isn't number one, but I tend to be a capricious sort.)
The Last Story I appreciate for many reasons, and I'm aware many of which are not shared by my contemporaries on this site. I appreciate how it attempted to take a very old model of RPG and hybridize it with a (relatively) new model of third-person action game. I appreciate how half its mechanics are entirely new - they originated with this game and may well persist in those to follow, should it ever inspire imitations. I appreciate Sakaguchi's obstinate adherence to his fairytale-esque storytelling, as trite and predictable as the worst Disney movies, but also as charming and palatable as their best. I appreciate... well, The Last Story, in so many words. I'm just a big ol' apologist fan of the whole shebang.
Binary Domain wins my "best surprise" award, just edging out Sleeping Dogs and Asura's Wrath in that particular regard. I generally have no truck with third-person shooters, aspiring as they often do to being nothing more than generic Gears copycats with a fraction of that series' overwrought gravitas and spectacle. Binary Domain instead feels more like last year's Vanquish - almost a parody of the macho 80s action movie conventions that Gears takes oh so seriously. The fast-paced, cover-based shooting gameplay is what it is (though I loved the variation in the robot designs and how their very nature changed the rules of how these games tend to operate: head shots are still useful, but so are leg shots and arm shots in specific circumstances) but the game shone through with its sense of wry, occasionally-deadpan humor, its crazy twists and its characters - even in spite of how stereotypical they initially appear - are some of the more endearing team members I've had the pleasure of gunning down robots side-by-side with.
I wasn't ever going to not like Theatrhythm. As a huge fan of Square's erstwhile composers Nobuo Uematsu and Hitoshi Sakimoto (and Masashi Hamauzu too, to a lesser extent) and of DS rhythm games in general (I broke my last one's touchscreen playing Ouendan 2), the game is everything I wanted from a Final Fantasy rhythm game. From its frivolous RPG facade to its dedication to its 25 years of source material, it's the game anyone could've reasonably hoped for upon hearing the premise for the first time. It might well win the anti-award for "least surprising", but when that means getting everything you wanted from a product you'd been anticipating with some fervor, it's an entirely acceptable conferral to receive.
I wasn't prepared to like Dishonored too much. It underwhelmed me at E3, seeming as it was the first of what might well have been a wave of stealth action games to follow in Deus Ex HR's wake. Dishonored is surprisingly novel, however, with how it sets up its individual missions and how it has a wealth of powers for stealth and combat: the former providing all sorts of novel approaches to a target and the latter allowing for a rare example of a stealth game that's just as satisfying should you elect to brute force your way through. I also liked the weird focus on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, from its more overt whale oil references to its mature cautionary tale of just how hollow and self-destructive a quest for vengeance invariably becomes.
Asura's Wrath just blew me away. It's rare that I become enamoured with a game for its sheer spectacle alone, as I've often been a proponent of the idea that video games ought to focus on their interactivity as a cornerstone in order to become its own unique medium independent from movies and cartoons, rather than meekly kowtow to their older brothers by aping them in such scarcely-interactive fare as Asura's Wrath here. Instead, I found the way it managed to combine context-appropriate video game commands with an utterly insane "Dragon Ball Z But Somehow Even Crazier" setting very rewarding. Not the first time one of these GOTY list entries has rendered me a hypocrite, and probably not the last.
Borderlands 2 didn't really take a sufficient number of steps to improve itself over its progenitor, but this becomes a sticky issue when you consider how difficult a prospect it is to follow a game as sublime as the original Borderlands. If you can tread water without rocking the boat (which is a terrible mixed analogy) when developing a sequel to a game that got so much right the first time, you're at least achieving something. Truth is, I probably spent more time playing this game than any other game on this list, and that's a rather substantial point in its favor.
Like Dust, you kind of have to look past the interesting backstory behind the game's development and appreciate Fez on its own merits. And that's an easy thing to do, because the game's packed with them. Like Dust, it has an incredible soundtrack, great graphics that do the pixel thing but takes it way larger with its immense environments, and a very subtle hidden core that quickly overrides what is superficially another Indie platformer with a neat gimmick. Make no mistake (though it would be hard to at this point, given the amount of attention and acclaim its received): the puzzle elements ARE the game, the platforming merely the icing.
Mass Effect 3 had some ugly business towards the end, there's no mistaking it. That a game that would've otherwise been a very satisfying conclusion to a noteworthy trilogy falls at the last hurdle is almost inexcusable. But it's nothing to diminish the dozen or so hours leading up to you-know-what, nor the polished veneer of its core tenets of exploration, storytelling and frantic combat. It's 95% of a fantastic game, let's say.
