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Post by derboo on Dec 28, 2013 19:13:04 GMT -5
Best: Volgarr the Viking: I'm not even much of a fan of Rastan, but this game is so good. If you have any sympathy for hard side-scrolling action platformers, this is a true modern classic. It's definitely up there with the best Castlevanias, Ghouls N' Ghosts and Ninja Gaiden II. Only a fool lets himself get scared away by the sketchy backgrounds. Gone Home: For proving that (almost) puzzle-free adventure games carried by storytelling alone can actually work and be engaging. 3D Classics Hang-On: Most of the time I don't even turn on the 3D, because that becomes tricky when using the gyro controls. Crimson Shroud: A few smaller game design fumbles notwithstanding, this feels like a JRPG made just for me. Short playing time, few combat encounters with a high percentage of meaningful ones, a solid system you actually have to explore to be successful and you get to swing around dice on the touch screen! Seriously, this feature needs to get built into Blood Bowl and every electronic fighting fantasy book ever made ASAP. Worst: Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny: I still couldn't update the article with the recent remake. Not because it's so bad (which it apparently is, thoug) or because of the countless bugs, but simply because the performance is so damn rotten. On lowest details it looks more outdated than Wizardry 8, but runs significantly worse than The Witcher. Secret Files 3: Just garbage. Stay away even (or especially) if you liked the previous games. Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs: This more than any of the others I did like to some extend and can even recommend to give it a try, and probably would have liked even more if it weren't for the letdown compared to The Dark Descent. I really only played the demos of the below, and like A Machine for Pigs, they're more in the category of "biggest disappointments" than genuinely bad: Fire Emblem: Awakening: I liked the series more when I couldn't read the text. Just can't stand the writing. Ethrian Odyssey IV: I never got around to trying any of the previous games, but I always expected I would love them if I tried. Well, I didn't.
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Post by Bobinator on Dec 28, 2013 19:24:23 GMT -5
Aero 2 and Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel are a lot better, if you're curious. 2 is a lot easier, since there's no longer Mega Man spikes slathered everywhere. Zero's a good deal harder, although not unbearably so, and the 'flying' gimmick is really fun, once you figure it out. ...Also, I can't think of any really good experiences I've had this year. Sorry. X: Not even MURI? Well, now that you mention it, quite possibly. I just feel like there are a lot of games this year that I ENJOYED. There's Injustice, for one thing. But I feel like that's not quite good enough to be on a 'best of' list. I was going to nominate Double Dragon Neon, but then I went to check Wikipedia and found out that it came out last year. ...So...
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Post by Resident Tsundere on Dec 29, 2013 2:24:11 GMT -5
Best for me in 2013 would probably be Sweet Fuse for PSP, which is funny since it actually came out in 2013 too (when most games I play are retro). It really surprised me with just how much I thoroughly loved it, and I've been getting a lot more into otome stuff since then. Other highlights were getting a bunch more PC-FX games and playing through Welcome to Pia Carrot and Chip-chan Kick, completing my first Ys game (both 1 and 2 actually, via Legacy of Ys on DS; I know Ys snobs pooh-pooh those versions but I had a lot of fun), and playing Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams at the beginning of the year (even if I'm not very fond of playing games on a PC). And while I'm still in the middle of it, I've been trying to beat Jurassic Park on SNES for the first time ever, after owning it for 20 years, and I already feel so accomplished getting farther than I ever did as a kid. Worst? Probably Aero the Acro-Bat for SNES. It's not an awful game, but it became a total chore to play after a little while. I really had to push myself to finish it. So would you recommend Sweet Fuse to other otome fans? I was wondering about whether or not I should check it out someday because I like games with relationship values and PSP games.
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Post by Scylla on Dec 29, 2013 2:45:46 GMT -5
Depends on how attached you are to the conventions of the otome genre. Sweet Fuse didn't do that great in Japan, likely because it goes against the grain so much, and a lot of diehard Western otome fans didn't care for it much either because they want the pretty boy bishounen, reserved heroines, and mushy plots that they're used to (not that there are a lot of diehard Western otome fans in the first place). But the fact that it's so different from other otome games is likely why it got picked up for localization, since it makes it particularly friendly to a Western audience that's new to otome gaming. While I like more traditional otome games too, I personally really appreciate that the art style is unique, the protagonist is a firecracker, and the plot includes a lot of mystery, drama, action, and humor on top of the romance.
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soup
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Post by soup on Dec 29, 2013 15:09:33 GMT -5
The Best from this year: The Last of Us - Probably my favourite game that I really don't want to play again anytime soon. Guacamelee! - Some of the best platforming/Metroidvania gameplay out there. Rayman Legends - Origins was amazing, but this one manages to top it. I still can't stop playing it, to get every single unlockable.
Best games from other years that I got around to playing this year: Persona 4 Golden - This one just might be one of my all time favourite games now. Ys: The Oath in Felghana - I played my first Ys game this year with I&II Chronicles, and finished up the year with Memories of Celceta, but Oath in Felghana was my favourite of the bunch. Great action, endearing characters, and that trademark super-fast gameplay.
The Worst: Sonic Lost World (3DS) - I'm a big Sonic fan. With every game that got dumped on by critics, I'd usually still enjoy the games for the most part. This game though... Some levels are just painful to get through. It also has some of the most frustrating special stages in the series. Any game that makes you use the gyro sensor, and gives you a time limit, is no fun in my book.
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Post by TheChosen on Dec 30, 2013 22:01:29 GMT -5
Alright, and now for the best! This year I got to play lot of great games released in the past years thanks to my new PC. In no particular order...
Uncharted Waters Online I'm no MMO guy. I'm no F2P guy either. This game is both and yet somehow I have played it over 100 hours according to my Steam profile. Maybe its because it feels bit like Sid Meier's Pirates, with sailing, trading and exploring. The gameplay is simple once you get past the boatloads of tutorials (pun intented) and even if you choose a specific path the game is pretty lenient on playing it however you want. And since PVP isn't the biggest aspect of the game, the P2W players aren't much of a problem. I haven't played it much recently since their publisher got changed recently and this broke the Steam version, but I'm hoping to get back into this someday.
Crusader Kings 2 I was a big fan of the first game and the sequel is even better. Its more refined, has more options and it still has the aspects that made the original game great.
Batman: Arkham Asylum & Arkham City I got into a big Batman-boom back in the Summer thanks to these games. Arkham City is the best superhero game I've ever played. Beating up thugs is very satisfying.
Dead Rising 2 & Dead Rising: Off the Record These two were just plain fun to play. No survival elements, no zombie waves, no linear maps. Off the Record made it bit better thanks to the sandbox mode.
Far Cry 3 Highly addicting FPS game.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Same highly addicting FPS game, but now in more budget-friendly size and turned into the ultimate tribute to 80's action cinema. Soundtrack of the year.
And speaking of Blood Dragon, this year was really good when it comes to FPS games. In addition to your yearly releases of Call of Duty and Battlefield, we had great trio of high quality budget shooters (Rise of the Triad, Blood Dragon and Call of Juarez), new Shadow Warrior game and both original Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D got redux versions on Steam. Is all good.
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Not as addicting as Daggerfall was for me back in the day, but I've definitely enjoyed it more than Morrowind (which I did enjoy a lot too, but I probably spent too much time installing mods on it than playing it). Nordic setting is awesome.
FTL I got more into this around this month and I've come to realize how fun this actually is. Its really fun when the battles turn very hectic and when you figure out new strategies to take out the enemies. I also like the roguelike elements, like the random starfield generated for every game.
Arma 2 Grade A military porn
Kerbal Space Program I think I like this game kind of like the same reason I like Dwarf Fortress. It starts of really challenging and has quite high learning curve, but once you get into the basics you start experimenting things and you slowly work your way towards the goals (First being trying to get your ship to fly, second being trying to reach to space and third being able to reach the other planets). Its kind of like a kids educational game made for adults.
Duke Nukem Forever Years I have waited for this, then it came out and everyone said it sucked. Two more years and I finally got to play it myself and while I can understand why people didn't like it, I did like it a lot myself and I really wish there was more of it.
Metal Gear Solid 4 Satisfying conclusion to the saga and I'm sure there is great gameplay in there in the midst of cutscenes.
Honorary Mentions: Left 4 Dead series Walking Dead PAYDAY: The Heist Portal 2 Magicka Grand Theft Auto 4 MURI Legend of Grimrock Euro Truck Simulator 2 Pinball Arcade Poker Night 2 Sega Saturn
And despite I already made short list of worst games I've played, I also have one disappointment:
Receiver Receiver is actually fun to play and the mechanics are interesting, but it really lacks proper content to make it anything else than a glorified tech demo. Last time I tried to play it I felt like I was playing a abandoned early access game.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2013 0:52:18 GMT -5
Arkham Origins, definitely. Really cannot overstate just how impressed I was with the story they put together for that game.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Dec 31, 2013 6:12:39 GMT -5
Due to getting a new computer, the passion was reignited and during 2013 I played much more games than in the past two or three years.
Disappointments: - Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Even Resident Evil 6 with all its many problems is gold compared to this one. - Zeno Clash 2. It tries to be much more than the first episode and ended up a mess. - Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. Beside the loss of almost all of the gameplay in favor of story-driven linearity, I didn't find the story that special, either. - Deadpool. Cutscenes, situations and dialogues are really fun - if there wasn't an incredibly shallow game inbetween. - Prince of Persia 2008. It's not bad but it's a 8-hours game stretched in at least double the time. - Duke Nukem Forever. Not the worst FPS out there, but the atrocious "humour" and the awful main character only underline its mediocrity. Duke3D was great not because of Duke, but because it would have been a great game even without the crass humour. - 3D Indie Horror Games. There were already before Slender, but after it their number has grown exponentially, and rarely they are worth their time. - Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and Legendary. The first of these FPSes by Spark Unlimited is terrible, the other much less, but overall they manage to squander any good ideas. They look like productions from one of those mediocre developers that should have disappeared long since... yet Spark are still around and got their hands on Lost Planet and Ninja Gaiden. - Dead Space 3. Still a good game overall but what they didn't realize is that the first two were good also because they had the right lenght. This one is much longer and makes every weakness more evident.
Appreciated: - The Anomaly series of "Tower Offense" games. Already wrote a lot about them. - Sonic & All-Star Racing Transformed. Best of the genre you can find on PC. - Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and also its excellent custom story The Great Work. True survival horror, and it ends before it risks getting old. - Resident Evil: Revelations. If it was for me, I'd swap Capcom's priorities from the numbered series to this one. It helps that I really liked the "ghost ship" setting. - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I'm currently just at the early chapters but I'm liking what I see, despite the pains of the fixed camera and the overall derivative gameplay, but what is really original lately outside of AAA games? I could care less for the old series (even if I love Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, mind you), what I see is a solid game and I'm hyped for the sequel. - Lost Valley. I replayed this old indie game I'm really attached to for various reasons - I'll surely talk more extensively about it in the future. It shows its age compared to more polished recent productions, but it's still a huge Zelda clone. - The Swapper. Sci-fi platform puzzler, excellent in everything - visuals, gameplay, story and atmosphere. - Mortal Kombat. Despite some headaches with the PC conversion, it's great as they say. Netherealm studied all the series, took only the good parts, and then elevated them by a cubic factor. - Ducktales Remastered. Never played the NES original but, due to nostalgia of the cartoon series, I enjoyed this a lot. - Zeno Clash 1. It gets repetitive and frustrating towards the end but it's really something different: beside the art direction, a first-person brawler that works. - Portal 2. Rarely I found a game that's safe from any important criticism. Ingenious puzzles, and Wheatley is magnificent. - Puddle and Super Splatters. Fluid-based action/puzzle gaming at its best.
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Post by Super Orbus on Dec 31, 2013 10:09:50 GMT -5
- Portal 2. Rarely I found a game that's safe from any important criticism. Ingenious puzzles, and Wheatley is magnificent. It's a pity Valve seems unable to produce a game more than once every five years or so. But when they do, it's usually a pretty good one.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Dec 31, 2013 21:00:33 GMT -5
Best: Volgarr the Viking: I'm not even much of a fan of Rastan, but this game is so good. If you have any sympathy for hard side-scrolling action platformers, this is a true modern classic. It's definitely up there with the best Castlevanias, Ghouls N' Ghosts and Ninja Gaiden II. Only a fool lets himself get scared away by the sketchy backgrounds. worst backgrounds in recorded history. Fixed that for you. Internet groupthink definitely worked in the favor of the makers of that game. The fact that you can't criticize it without being branded a bigot didn't hurt them either. So did some bizarre parasite from an asteroid crawl into you and eat your soul?
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jan 1, 2014 12:51:48 GMT -5
I haven't played Gone Home yet (and in all likelihood, never will), but everything I read about it online convinces me that it's the kind of pretentious crap that I'll likely hate anyway (the plot summary alone sounds like a terrible Lifetime TV movie), which is why I'm not surprised it's on derboo's GOTY list (the same guy who hates God Hand and Vanquish, and bashes a Fire Emblem game for its plot). Still, the anti-hype against it is almost as dumb as all the praise it gets. As for my personal GOTY, I didn't play much in the way of new releases, outside of MGR (which was pretty good, if a bit too short) and a few demos, since I was mostly busy trying finish my backlog. I'll say it's probably a tossup between MGS4 or Okami, even though I'm only halfway done with the latter.
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Post by Super Orbus on Jan 1, 2014 13:12:50 GMT -5
Okami is pretty long and has several fakeout endings, where you think the game is over and then it just keeps on truckin'. So you might actually not be as far along as you think.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Jan 1, 2014 19:49:55 GMT -5
I haven't played Gone Home yet (and in all likelihood, never will), but everything I read about it online convinces me that it's the kind of pretentious crap that I'll likely hate anyway (the plot summary alone sounds like a terrible Lifetime TV movie), which is why I'm not surprised it's on derboo's GOTY list (the same guy who hates God Hand and Vanquish, and bashes a Fire Emblem game for its plot). Still, the anti-hype against it is almost as dumb as all the praise it gets. As for my personal GOTY, I didn't play much in the way of new releases, outside of MGR (which was pretty good, if a bit too short) and a few demos, since I was mostly busy trying finish my backlog. I'll say it's probably a tossup between MGS4 or Okami, even though I'm only halfway done with the latter. I ended up watching a playthrough beause even though on sale on steam, I really don't want to support the authors of it (see below). It's not like I'd have gotten any different of an experience from actually playing it considering how it's basically a visual novel(1). It was as pretentious and full of shit as I expected given the critical response and word of mouth from, for lack of a less broad term, "tumblr." It's great to use games to tackle real-world issues, but - and it's hard to put it in words - my bullshit sense is tingling. Underneath the "rich" (not really) story and even the way they've promoted it (including the way they stirred up shit about not going to PAX over the one Penny Arcade guy being a homophobe or whatever) it feels like a very targeted, calculated, Golgo 13 sniper attempt at manipulating the emotions and group loyalty of people for financial and critical gain. In other words, it's like they applied the Tyler Perry strategy to a different audience. Not only that, as I bitched about in the earlier post it's a perfect scheme for high reviews - after all, if a reviewer were to cry out that the Emperor was wearing no clothes (so to speak), that reviewer would get lynched within an hour for being intolerant. Anyway, it just pisses me off how internet groupthink usually leads to shitty products making money that didn't really deserve it in the first place. (1) Not that VNs are a problem. They just are when it's a self-important piece of crap.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2014 19:59:50 GMT -5
The only thing I found redeeming about Gone Home was the "grrrl riot" music, partly just because it's not something that everyone and their grandma was listening to in the nineties. I completely agree with the above assessment.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2014 20:11:41 GMT -5
I'm a little more tolerant of the developers taking a chance at making something that didn't involve explosions or white men with buzzcut hair, but I definitely have to agree about both the way the game was marketed and the insane fervor of its supporters.
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