John's 5 Feats and Failures of 2013

FAILURES

5. Ouya

If only I cared more...

I Kickstartered this bad boy and all I can say is… Hmm… Not much. I believe I turned the system on twice, maybe three times. I just have no reason to use this thing. There’s nothing compelling to play on it, and the few games I did try on it (specifically Final Fantasy III and Sonic the Hedgehog: Episode 1) ran poorly and, if I remember correctly, had no sound. All in all, meh.

4. Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded

Not that there was much to expect from a Leisure Suit Larry game, this was still far below what a gamer deserves out of a game, remake or no, in 2013. The artwork was nice and the voice acting was pretty good, but the gameplay felt as if it was ported straight from the original and the eventual “payoff,” if you want to call it that, is a paltry reward for what was a paltry experience. Leisure Suit Larry isn’t good enough to get away without showing any tits, yo.

3. The Last of Us’ gameplay/characterization in The Novelist

This is a two-fer because I couldn’t decide which was worse and wanted both to make the list. In other reviews, The Novelist has already been criticized for its poor explication of the characters you aren’t viewing the game through (i.e. everyone but Dan), but even more than that, I feel that Linda is one of the worst female characters in American media. She is the epitome of a selfish, unsympathetic, unappreciative – I believe

I wish I remembered when you weren't such a bitch.

the word I kept using while playing the game was “cunt” – woman, and it’s nigh impossible to feel any connection to her or her desires.

The Last of Us is a very good game, but it’s repetitive. Holy SHIT is it repetitive. Toward the end of the game, I was hoping, wishing for the end to come and come quickly. My problem lies in the fact that there were two things to do in the game: walk and fight. If you weren’t walking, you were fighting, and vice versa. There was very little exploration, there was no reason to go searching for collectible items, etc. The few puzzles there were were recycled ad nauseum (i.e. floating Ellie from place to place). It was a good game and I enjoyed it, but damn, it needed some variety.

2. Beyond Two Souls

Where to begin? This game had tons of problems: the “gameplay” is awful; the story is interesting but the characters in it are all terrible, vacuous beings; the ending(s) is ridiculous and doesn’t make any sense within the narrative’s own confines. (I should amend this last, there are four endings to pick from, and two of them do make sense, albeit one of them is anything but a logical leap from the events of the denouement.) There’s more, but I don’t feel like going through it. Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe are fantastic and are the only redeeming factors in a game rife with poor direction.

1. Grand Theft Auto V

I just don’t get this game. It’s well-made with excellent production values and tons to do, but, beyond the first couple of hours (in a game intended to be played for hours and days and weeks) it becomes stale quickly.

First (and I’ve remarked on it quite a bit in this article), good characters are important for my enjoyment of a game, and this game has none. Except for Franklin. He makes sense to me, his decisions, his motivations. He feels real. Michael and Trevor, though? Fuck ‘em. Michael is a piece of shit and Trevor is only there to be shocking and outrageous, and it grates on my patience, of which I have an abundance (I teach children in my real life). This game is appealing, though, and the reason I bought it is because it’s an enormous sandbox to play around in, and I generally love those games, but this one… I just can’t do it with these guys. Maybe if I could play the entire thing as only Franklin… but I can’t.

Second, the game’s repetitive. Lots of games are repetitive. Hell, Tetris is the same damn thing for hours on end. Katamari Damacy is, too. So is Dark Souls. But they all feel different enough throughout your time with them (admittedly, not KD, but I will never not love that game) that you don’t look on your next play with dread and boredom. I couldn’t escape this with GTA. Every mission wasn’t the same, but it felt the same. To me, anyway. And I have felt this way with every single GTA I’ve ever played.

So why did I buy it? Because I keep expecting to be seduced and to fall in love because it’s beautiful and hip and cool and it has good taste in music. You have almost everything I love in a game, but I just can’t get past your ugly personality, GTA.

*sigh*

FEATS

5. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

Time to hit these books hard - with a vacuum.

I’m not sure why, but when coming up with a best of 2013 list, 3DS games were the first to pop to mind: Animal Crossing, Pokémon, the new Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei IV, and this one are chief among them. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is probably the most fun out of all of them. Traveling around the house and, eventually, the town to recover different items the Professor needs to continue his ghost experiments is fun and sometimes hilarious. And the game plays really well. Many of this year’s games have suffered due to poorly implemented control schemes (I'm looking at you, Beyond Two Souls), but not this one. It plays like butter.

4. Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock was a revelation when I played it on the 360 so many years ago. The steampunk theme resonated with me being an avid Final Fantasy VII fan and the story’s climax is one of the best in any media. Infinite isn’t quite as good as the first one was, but it’s a great game. A lot of people (my friends with whom I spoke about the game, anyway) thought the story was hamfisted and not especially great and maybe even pretty predictable (which I agree with – I had it pegged within a few hours), but it was a fine experience. I had a great time working my way through Columbia and Infinite is one of the few recent games I’ve seriously considered replaying through entirely (…even though I haven’t).

3. The Stanley Parable

Better look LEFT and make the RIGHT decision in this room.

Wow. This is not a difficult game, nor is it particularly interesting or exciting in the actual playing of it, but it’s a fine game, if short, and, in my playing experience, unique. I am not traditionally a PC gamer, and so did not play the original mod. Hell, I only played this game the other day when it finally came to Steam for Mac. But it’s fun. It's really fun. I enjoyed playing with the narrator as I either conformed to or blatantly disregarded expectations. It’s as if you can actually change the course of the game. You can’t of course, but the game makes you feel like you can. And that’s the point. Until you realize you can’t.

Good game.

2. Super Mario 3D World/Pikmin 3/Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Of the three, I’d have to say Pikmin 3 is my hands-down favorite. I’ve played Wind Waker before and Mario, no matter how different-yet-similar 3D World is, is Mario. Pikmin 3 is intensely satisfying in the way that Dark Souls is. It’s nowhere near as hard, but every successful expedition is heartwarming. Every battery, berry, and button you find is a small exhilarating accomplishment whereas each battle you wage well is a large exhilarating Victory with a capital “V”. I hope they make a 3DS version, soon.

1. Pokémon X/Y

My number one game is the game I played the most. Pokémon is, by its very nature, a game you have to spend a lot of time with, training and exploring and breeding (if that’s your thing), but it’s rare that a game has the gift where you really want to spend all that time with it. This game is as charming as it is involved, and I felt like a kid again traveling the country capturing Pokémon. It’s also the first since the original Red and Blue that I played from start to finish, even going back through after the end and catching the various legendaries, or trying to, anyway.

If I had any problems with the game (I played Y, by the way) it would be these: it’s too easy (I understand, though – it’s a game for kids, after all) and there are too. Many. Pokémon. I don’t mean to sound like a mean old miser, but holy shit has the magic gone out of finding new Pokémon. Because there are so goddamn many, now. Back in the day, a new Pokémon was a somewhat momentous occasion because there would only be one or two new Pokémon in each new area you went, along with a whole rack of ones you had already seen, so randomly encountering one you didn’t have was an actual “OH SHIT AM I PREPARED FOR THIS” moment. In this game, though, it’s nearly every battle that you find a new Pokémon, and you eventually stop trying to catch them all because your money supply simply can’t keep up with the amount of Poké balls necessary to do so, and when you get to the point where you do have the means, you no longer have the will to go back through to each area to pick for the one you didn’t get the first time around.

Looking at 2013 in review, though... What a year, Nintendo.

 

Accurate representation of Nintendo Japan's work environment

What were the best (and worst) reviewed games of 2013?

I'm not a big fan of review aggregator sites like Metacritic for making my game-purchasing decisions. Games are a subjective art form, and many of my favorite games have terrible review scores. But review aggregates are good for assessing the state of the industry as a whole. So let's take a gander at the best-reviewed games of 2013, and see what that says about the publishers and console manufacturers. Note: I'm using GameRankings.com, my preferred review aggregator. I'm only counting games with at least 20 reviews.

10. Rayman Legends - Wii U/Xbox 360/PlayStation 3

9. Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut - Wii U

8. The Stanley Parable - PC

7. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD - Wii U

6. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3DS

5. Fire Emblem: Awakening - 3DS

4. BioShock Infinite - PC/360/PS3

3. Super Mario 3D World - Wii U

2. The Last of Us - PS3

1. Grand Theft Auto V - 360/PS3

So much for the Awesome Next Generation of Console Gaming, rite? There are exactly zero Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or PlayStation Vita games on this list. But wait! The newest generation of console gaming isn't totally unrepresented: There are four Wii U titles and two 3DS games. According to the internet, though, Nintendo has already "lost" the Console Wars.

The remainder of this list is comprised of last-gen Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games... and The Stanley Parable? One of my favorite games of the year! I'm surprised it got enough mainstream reviews to put it on this list. Just goes to show how far indie games have come.

Jake's five favorite games of 2013

Honorable mention: I would include Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World on this list, but it's an expansion pack, not a full standalone game. I certainly played it enough this year to warrant a mention. My review of the game is here.

5. Metro: Last Light

A sequel to the cult favorite Metro 2033, Ukrainian studio 4A Games made Metro: Last Light in terrible working conditions imposed by soon-to-fold publisher THQ. The game's entire budget was less than some other first-person shooters get for cutscenes. It represents a dying breed in this industry: the AA game. Indie games are blooming and multimillion-dollar blockbusters will always sell, but this middle ground is something that may not exist in a decade's time.

Metro: Last Light depicts post-apocalyptic Moscow with a grim melancholy that could only come from an Eastern European developer. But there's a twisted sense of hope: walking through the subterranean Metro stations which have become Muscovites' home, you overhear all sorts of quirky conversations between characters... and a full 15-minute variety show at the underground Bolshoi that you can walk right past or sit down and watch. Read my full review of the game here.

4. The Stanley Parable

The Stanley Parable would be higher on this list, but I already fawned about it enough in 2012. This game was originally a mod for Half-Life 2, and this year finally got a standalone HD remake. If you played the original, you know what to expect, but it's bigger and better. If you're new to Stanley, do yourself a favor and go buy it now. It's a game that's best not to know anything about before playing--it's entirely about deconstructing the nature of narrative in video games and the concept of player choice. Hint: you'll want to play through the short game more than once if you want to see everything there is to see. The Stanley Parable is $15 on Steam, although if you can catch the end of the Steam Winter Sale you can get it for a bit cheaper.

3. Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Nintendo's 3DS had by far the best 2013 of any console, handheld or otherwise. Fire Emblem: Awakening, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Pokémon X/Y, the list goes on and on. But honestly, the game I enjoyed the most was Animal Crossing. No challenge, no fighting, no winning or losing, just fun times as the mayor of a cute village populated by animals. There's a zen garden-like quality to playing this game, planting flowers and fishing for squid. The game isn't made for playing in hours-long binges, instead playing best in short 30-minute sessions every day. Animal Crossing has a clever sense of humor, and its family friendly appeal makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

2. Gone Home

I've written about Gone Home before. It's a game that will appeal to people who don't even like video games. You play as a girl coming home from a semester studying abroad to find her family is gone, and her Oregon home is deserted. You spend the entire game simply exploring the empty home trying to piece together what happened. There's a creepy haunted house vibe to it all, but without the actual horror part. Gone Home is a poignant commentary on family relationships, homosexuality, and '90s culture. It's $20 on Steam and on the game's own website, although if you can catch the end of the winter sale on either website, you can get it for $10.

1. Papers, Please

I've written about Papers, Please: A Dystopian Document Thriller before. As you can see from the screenshot above, it doesn't quite have the graphical fidelity of any of the other games on this list. Papers, Please looks and plays like an early '90s point-and-click game, and it works beautifully. You work as an immigration officer for a fictional Soviet Bloc country, processing people across the border, approving and denying visas. It's all about paperwork. Incredibly boring. But the rules and regulations change, and people will try to tell you why you should let them through without correct documentation.

Papers, Please is a look into the banality of evil, the moral shades of gray that come from a bloated bureaucracy. You want to let the old woman without a visa who's lost her daughter across the border, but you also want to put food on the table for your own family at home. Papers, Please is about a fake Soviet country, but it's more relevant than ever for Americans today. It's $10 through its own website as well as all the major digital retailers, although if you buy it in the next couple days you can get it cheaper on winter sales.

The Stanley Parable as a parallel to Portal, and analyzing linear narratives

This past summer, Davey Wreden's Half-Life 2 mod "The Stanley Parable" was released to a wave of critical acclaim. A one-man project that took two years to create, it explores the concepts of player choice and linear narrative in game design. It's mind-boggling.

If you haven't played it, you owe it to yourself to download "The Stanley Parable" right now. It's free, it doesn't even require Half-Life 2 to play (on the PC), and it takes under an hour to do everything there is to do. There's no shooting aliens involved, so even if you don't play many video games, you can appreciate this one.

During my playthrough of "The Stanley Parable," it struck me that many of these themes were similar to another Half-Life 2 spinoff: Valve's own Portal.

Both "The Stanley Parable" and Portal deal with unreliable narrators who may or may not be characters within the game. Both feature silent protagonists who are a tiny part of a giant corporation.

But why? Why does Half-Life inspire such critiques of gamic narrative? The core Half-Life titles themselves involve a silent protagonist and uncertain overlord character. Valve is often put on a pedestal by the gaming community as the pinnacle of Western game design. Story and gameplay interwoven perfectly, with narrative and character development advanced without need for cutscenes.

I'm tempted to be cynical about this canonization of a game developer. But their work really is that good. And if they inspire someone to create something as chillingly beautiful as "The Stanley Parable," I'm okay with that pedestal Valve sits upon.

It was interesting watching my girlfriend (who doesn't play many games) play "The Stanley Parable." Upon learning the plot's twist, she quit the game and shut off the computer. "That's the only way to win the game," she said. And really, I guess she's right.