Second verse, same as the first.

Best Game

This one's definitely going to be a hard category. I played so many good games in July that you'd think the month was trying to tell the first half of the year to go fuck itself. I mean, we have Metal Gear Solid 2 and its naked cartwheels, Fallout 3 and its rich landscape full of things to kill, Pandora's Tower and that skeleton jar guy thing (the hell was he supposed to be, again), and some other things. However, I'm giving the Best Game of July Award to Terranigma. Great music, vivid graphics, solid action RPG gameplay, and a well told story, it's overall a fitting way to close out the storied history of the SNES. Wait, how could almost all of this apply to Pandora's Tower, too? I need to be more distinctive with these features.

Worst Game

Given the previous section, this looks doomed on arrival. But rest assured, dear reader: I apparently thought ahead. Near the end of the month, a couple of bad games managed to sneak in alongside the higher quality stuff I was just writing about. For instance, the original Shin Megami Tensei, what with its confusing navigation and piss easy boss fights around every corner. But at least that has a redeemable aspect in the form of the world it creates for itself. Harder to find such a redeeming side to Dynamite Dux. That aloof "gun things down" face can't mask the absolute nothingness that is Dynamite Dux. Then again, can anything, really? Besides substantial gameplay mechanics, of course.

Averagest Game

So with mostly very good games and a couple of medicore games near the end of the month, what does that mean for the average game? Absolutely goddamn nothing. Remember: this category is math-powered, because that's good for the environment. (Ever see a math spill or calculus fracking? Exactly.) That only means that the average game is going to be pretty good instead of merely average, since the average for this month is 7.3. What game matches that? Dragon Quest V at 7.3. With gangster eight year olds and the Space Pope giving out BJs left and right, this game was bound to win some type of award.

Best Game

Oh, August. What the hell happened? July was so awesome, with Metal Gear Solid 2 and Pandora's Tower and all that other cool stuff. So how do you follow that up? Games like Black Ops 2 and Koudelka and ugh. Not the best follow-up in the world. But that's not to say everything in August was bad. For example, Fire Emblem: Awakening. I think that's enough to qualify it for the Best Game award this month. Little Samson probably would have been considered for this award if I'd actually gone through with my ideas to video review this fucker. But as that never happened, neither shall this game receiving an award of any kind. Hey, speaking of video reviews...

Worst Game

Now with only a small handful of great games for that last section, there should be an over-abundance of bad games to talk about, right? Well, not really. Looking over my notes, I can only find a few truly bad games worthy of the Worst Game moniker. Two of them are the Zelda CD-i games. You know, the ones that failed to incur my unholy wrath? On video? That should be a sign that neither one's being deemed the Worst Game of August. No, that honor falls upon Toilet Kids. Congratulations, Bits Laboratory: you made a game worse than the Zelda CD-i games. I'd ask you if you were proud of yourselves if I wasn't so sure that you're no longer in business.

Averagest Game

So with not a lot of bad games and not a lot of good games, what does that leave us with? That's right: January! This is what we call progress. One caveat, though: January, as I recall, was clear-cut. Not so with August. The average is 6.7, but two games remain equidistant from this score: Gears of War 3 and Darwinia. It was an easy decision, as I'm giving the award to Darwinia. When caught between two mildly challenging choices, always choose the one you actually like, especially when that option gave you the chance to use a random Japanese word for no reason. (You're gonna....be fairly damn confused when that comes around, now that I think about it.)

Best Game

This is gonna be a weird category to consider. Rampant alcoholism (you'll understand why in the next section) has wiped out both my memory of this year and my ability to read, but I'd like to think that even at my lowest (not counting this), I had at least a few good games for this category. September, on the other hand, only has two games really worth considering: Killer is Dead and Yume Penguin Monogatari. As good as the last one is (it has the higher score of the two), there's no way I'm giving the award to a game that reifies both bulimia and vore. Instead, I’m giving it to the game that just throws whatever at you and hopes that it all works out. Somehow, it does. Rock on, you magnificent bitch. (For some reason, I’ve always wanted to write that sentence as of five seconds ago.)

Worst Game

What the hell happened, September? We both know that August was having some trouble finding some good games, but at least it was trying. You, however, saw fit to stuff mediocre game after mediocre game down my gullet. Tenchu, Sonic Shuffle, Mario Party Advance....You certainly made it easy for me to choose a bad game. Strangely enough, though, none of those games are quite bad enough to take home Worst Game of September of 2013. That particular honor befalls Onimusha: Warlords. Samurai action game? Great idea! Basing that action game on early, fixed camera Resident Evil games? Not a very good idea. Instead of the grace and precision we come to expect of the honored samurai, we get the plodding inprecision we come to expect of the Star Wars Kid (if the Star Wars Kid was being emulated at half the FPS). Wonderful.

Averagest Game

Now this is, by far, the most interesting category of September, and possibly the entire year. (Well, at least the entire year so far.) Why is that? The average score of the month was 6.1, and equidistant from that are three games. That's right: three games are competing for the glory of the least notable game of a particularly unnoteworthy month: Sakura Samurai, Ninja Spirit, and Mario Party Advance. Mario Party's automatically out because it has the lowest score of the three and it's a proud supporter of sick sexual crimes. That just leaves Japan games. I distinctly remember liking Sakura Samurai when I played it, so it's safe to say that it isn't winning this award. That honor goes to Ninja Spirit and its admirable averageness.

Best Game

Some of you may be confused as to what the hell's up with the banner for this month. What is this game, and why is it so ostentatiously represented? The game in question is Napple Tale, and because it's a game that concerns itself with the seasons themselves, I thought it best to give it all the banner space. And it is for that reason I give it the Game of the Month of October award. Sure, I could have focused on more relevant qualities, like the gameplay (solid), the story (sort of solid?), or the music (so densely packed a solid that it may very well be a black hole), but the mere fact that it managed to overpower the horrid Plant Laika is more than enough to earn an award of some type.

Worst Game

Which is more than I can say for the following game. Something as bad as Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom deserves no accolades of any kind, but for whatever reason, I feel compelled to point it out to you. Maybe it's to keep you from making the same horrible mistakes I did. I'm not entirely sure. Now I could ramble on about how it's a logic-based game with absolutely no logic, how it removes items from your inventory just to make you get the exact same ones, or how it looks like MS Paint spewed biohazardous fluids from both ends. However, I believe my most cogent argument came to me while compiling scores for the next category: I looked at Princess Tomato's score, and realized it's the same as Planet Laika's. I'm fairly certain that's a war crime in certain countries. Like mine, for instance.

Averagest Game

I feel like I've said this a lot so far, but what a month for average games! In fact, only about two games this month broke the trend of mathematical averageness: the previously covered Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, and Code of Princess. Strangely enough, the second game, despite being distinctive, grabs the average. I know, I know: it's strange how a game I don't remember liking that much is being honored with easily the least memorable reward on here, but there's one thing you have to keep in mind: the average for this month was 5.7. (Blame fucking Princess Tomato for bringing it down.) Code of Princess got as close as possible with a 5.3, so I am bound by math to give it this award. DO NOT QUESTION THE ALL KNOWING MATH.

Best Game

.........*frothy bubbly noises*......That's my way of indicating how absolutely defeated I feel. (I have to remind myself that this isn't a video feature and that audio/visual gags don't work.) It's like the year just gets continually worse as I go on. I can't even think of a game that's notably good enough to be the Best Game of November. The closest I have is Maui Mallard, but come on. Maui Mallard? Yea, that was an OK game (partially because of how completely strange every last aspect of its existence was), but Game of the November? Is that really all the month has to offer?

Worst Game

Oh, that's right: bad games. Fortunately, this part of the blog is gonna be stupidly easy to write, since I have so very much to work with. No matter where I look, I'm bound to find a terrible game well deserving of this award. Half Life 2: Episode Two. (Be prepared for some controversial blogs, is what I'm saying.) Akazukin Chacha. The Phantom Menace The Phantom Menace. If ever there was a warning sign that I was going to make a horrible mistake, that should have been it. But surprisingly, I found something far worse in this particular month. At the beginning, even. That's right, I'm talking Motoko-Chan no Wonder Kitchen, a game I know for a fact that you've never heard of. It's pretty much Cooking Mama if the titular Mama's kitchen was a meth lab where half the ingredients were disgusting mayonnaise. This being an adventure game, it's a lot worse than you're probably imagining.

Averagest Game

And so we come to the ultimate proof that 2013 has just been one downhill slog since about July. No month has managed to surpass the July average of 7.3; if anything, it's been a steady decline from there. November hit a new low at 5.5. Remember, remember, the fifth point fifth of November. Also remember remember how many ties I've had to deal with, because that certainly ain't going away. This time, it's between Daibakushou Jinsei Gekijo and Wonder Momo. I'm digging the bottom of the barrel, aren't I? This might look like a particularly difficult decision to make....

...but I don't think that's gonna be an issue.

Wonder Momo. Duh.

Best Game

What a way to end the year. For those too lazy to click a musical link every minute, that's not sarcastic. December honestly ended up a great way to end the year. After so many months of crap and mediocrity, I get to wrap up 2013 with some decent games, for a change. The Averagest section will make that especially clear, but I think my choice of Best will illustrate this point just as well: Little Inferno. I didn't have to settle for anything, like I did last month. This game I genuinely enjoyed. How do you get two hours worth of content out of burning things? If I made this game, the answer would be "set a building on fire". Fortunately, the fine people at Tomorrow Corporation instead decided on "intelligent narrative context" and "scathing anti-capitalist themes". This is why I don't make video games.

Worst Game

But alas, there is a downside to a month filled with good games: a veritable lack of bad games. Wait, how's that a downside? A situation like this not only gives me a ton of good games to play, but it also makes choosing a bad one that much easier: Tokimeki Memorial! You know, that famous(-ish) dating sim that wasn't released outside Japan?..........OK, so Tokimeki Memorial isn't necessarily a bad game; it's just an incompetent one. A game centered around romance sounds like a good idea, but math and objectifying dating strategies both damn Tokimeki as a game of poor quality. Especially math. When's the last time you saw math with a fine lady?

Averagest Game

We're dealing with sub-Laika averages this month, aren't we? Surprisingly, no. 6.8 is the number to match this month; a marked improvement over the steady decline from July......and the exact same average from January. Spooky. How about we ignore the possibility that I'm living in some sort of Groundhog Day Time Prison and instead focus on the task at hand? What earns the coveted title of Averagest Game of December? Doraemon 3: Nobita to Toki no Hougyoku. It's a game as average as it is obscure, and that's exactly why I gave it a score of 6.8. That way, it's a shoe-in f.......What's that? Penny Arcade got the exact same score? And it didn't even have to try? FUCK IT! Doraemon's the most average game of December. But what about the entire year? Hopefully, we find out in...

Otherwise known as the finale. But before we start handing out awards, a graph!

I have no idea what the fuck that means. And with that out of the way, the actual awards! A little disclaimer before I begin things proper: this particular part of the blog is gonna be in reverse order from everything else, because I like building suspense. That out of the way? Good. Let's wrap up this monstrosity.

Averagest Game

In retrospect, this may not be the best place to wrap things up. Have you seen the averages for the previous months? They're all over the place! What does that mean for the year as a whole? 6.6. It means 6.6. That's three points off the usual average of 6.9. Most disappointing and most unsexy. That probably explains how a game like Steel Storm ended up winning this award. In a way, this feels absolutely appropriate. All I remember about the game is that there's shooting and nothing else. That's all an average game has to be, really: shooting and nothing else. And it is for that reason that Steel Storm wins the Most Average Game of the Year Award. Or maybe it's because that's the only game to get a 6.6 score this year. Yea, that's probably why.

Worst Game

Oh, like there's even a fucking choice. Planet Laika.

Best Game

And so we finally come to the end of this feature. Despite all the shit I've had to push through (especially toward the end), there are a lot of great games to choose from. Persona 3 FES, Terranigma, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance...Hell, I could even choose a game that actually came out this year, like Fire Emblem: Awakening or Pandora's Tower or Project......I can't finish that sentence with a straight face. But in the end, only one game can win the coveted GOTY title: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. I know this seems completely out of ana field, but rest assured that I replayed the game back in January and simply never told anybody. Honest. Now get out there and play Fragile Dreams, already. Your King commands it.