june gloom on 18/12/2013 at 12:49

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BSI's story is not intriguing. It's standard boilerplate comic book nonsense the likes of which even DC hasn't sucked this badly at in years. So it wins Most Disappointing Ending Despite Mediocre Game 2013.

Most disappointing ending to a generally okay game: Outlast.

Malleus on 18/12/2013 at 17:22

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Ah, might as well sum it up - I spent most of my time with older games*, there are only two games released this year that I genuinely liked, and they are Dead Space 3 and The Swapper.

Dead Space 3 delivered what I expected with cool additions (crafting, co-op) and had great looking environments. Story got cheesy-crazy, but I liked it. In the end it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth, and that was enough to make it my favorite I guess :).
The Swapper was a nice puzzle game, but what made it stand out was the great story idea and atmosphere. Visuals were fantastic too.

(I'm hoping to add Metal Gear Rising to this list, we'll see soon, hopefully.)


Although not a proper game, the Dishonored DLCs are also worth mentioning, they were almost better than the main game, and while we're at DLCs, Borderlands 2 Tiny Tina's DLC was pretty good too, although by the end of it I got really tired of BL2's gameplay.

Other than these I only played Bioshock Infinite and Metro Last Light, but didn't like either that much. They kept me engaged while I was playing them, but didn't leave a good enough impression in the end. The more I think about them, the less I like them.


Games not of this year I played (and liked):
Dark Souls, Fallout New Vegas, Waking Mars, Dragon Age 2, Bulletstorm, Saints Row 3, and The Walking Dead.

*3 months of Dark Souls and 2 months of Fallout New Vegas :)

henke on 18/12/2013 at 19:42

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Largely thanks to the praise ITT, I just picked up Gone Home. It's on sale right now at the (https://www.humblebundle.com/store) Humble Store, along with Shadow Warrior and ETS2. :thumb:

WingedKagouti on 18/12/2013 at 20:18

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Zinyak only makes it to #2 for me.

Heng Long from Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death takes #1 with his oh so silly cliched take on a cinematic villain. Especially noteworthy is his instruction to the workers of the facility you're tearing through to "leave the place as hazardous as possible". Yes, the game has an in-universe explanation of why the facility has all these safety hazards.

Ostriig on 18/12/2013 at 23:19

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It committed. It worked to develop the characters and their roles in the plot without getting lost in the backdrop. This time, unlike the first Bioshock which blended grimdark with cooky, there's a consistent tone to both the writing and the visuals, in a bright, sketchy, watercolour sort of way and it works. Levine's openly stated goal - saw him give a talk at BAFTA before the game shipped - was to try and explore a Big Daddy-Little Sister sort of relationship applied to the player character and Elizabeth. And while they managed to torpedo that in a spectacular fashion from a mechanical standpoint (no fail, no tension), I felt the writing elements worked well for it.

So much so that Bioshock Infinite is probably my most memorable game of 2013. It's a poor game, most of its fortes could've worked just as well in film format, but an overall delightful ten hours spent.

To swing this back on-topic, The Last of Us is a close second. It's a better game, to be certain, but its more serious themes and plot also make me less indulgent with its mechanical shortcomings. While I find it very easy to gloss over Infinite's bull, when the more realistic TLoU comes in and tells me I can only carry twenty revolver rounds, arbitrarily, I have a much harder time getting over that.

Saints Row 4 was a bucket of fun. I loved the new superpower mechanics, aces, and certainly taking out some of the more tedious gameplay pieces from 3. But it was also quite obvious that it started out as a quick expansion, some bugs left over and virtually no cinematics. I'm also gonna pick on a tone again, though in the opposite sense - 3 constantly went from regular to balls-out crazy, and the contrast worked to really bring the crazy out. 4, on the other hand, tries to stay constantly crazy so there's a bit less of an impact. Overall, very recommended, but I'd still recommend SR3 over it.

I've yet to finish Beyond: Two Souls. Probably an hour or so left to go. It's interesting as an alternative to what you usually play, but it's not Heavy Rain. The latter had a pseudo-branching plot which afforded the player with a good dose of apparent plot agency, and the detective thriller approach fit well with that. Beyond, on the other hand, has so far struck me as patently linear and I've never had the impression of having any agency thus far. Feels like I'm just there to push buttons to move the film along. And the non-chronological storytelling doesn't bring the best out of the plot. To keep it short, some good setpieces with very sharp moments, the acting is good and the related tech is on par. But if you haven't already, play Heavy Rain and consider this afterwards.

And of the 2013 crop I still have to play Metro: Last Light and the Age of Empires II The Forgotten expansion.


P.S. Shit, forgot Tomb Raider! I shouldn't have, because I enjoyed the shit out of it. Never been a classic Tomb Raider fan so it had no preconceptions to live up to. Fast, balls-to-the-wall action, extremely pretty, some interesting locales, and even got me a little bit curious about the plot. Made for a breath of fresh air from my usual inventory-managing and dialogue-treeing.