The Games of 2013 - Day One

2013 was a big year for gaming. I feel like I say this every year, but this one in particular, on the cusp of a new console generation, has been particularly spectacular. Risks were taken, franchises were broadened, the independent scene exploded, and the free-to-play market was established as a true and proper business model. I can’t say I’ve been fortunate enough to play every single game that has come out this year, and quite frankly there are some I wish I had played that may have possibly ended up on this list; but, the fact of the matter is, what I did play either stuck with me for all the right reasons or made me question whether everyone else around me was playing the same thing

I’ve broken my list up into a few different sections. From now until Christmas I will be discussing the many games that came out this year: those that just narrowly missed out on my “Best of” list, those that I felt had no place at all, and others I felt were just not warranting of the attention they received. I will cap off this series of articles with my Top 5 Games of 2013, followed by my most anticipated games of next year. So, let’s begin.

The Runners-Up

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Revengeance was, at its core, an unadulterated bloody romp that only loosely called the Metal Gear series family. It exists entirely as a standalone game and requires no preexisting knowledge of its parent series. What it does require, however, is a tremendous amount of patience and persistence. Revengeance is a difficult game, even on its lowest setting, but nary a moment felt too difficult, all except for the game’s final battle. That fight notwithstanding, combat in Revengeance was tight, fast, and blissfully entertaining. The game’s use of slow-motion to allow players to slice-and-dice with precision was its most impressive feature, and gave such an already-unique action game something to boast about.

Shadowrun Returns

I’m a sucker for strategy games, so when this reboot of the classic cyberpunk RPG – based on the tabletop game of the same name – was announced in early 2012 as a Kickstarter project, I was immediately excited. Not only was this game properly difficult, but the level of customization with characters guaranteed that any subsequent playthrough would be unique; it’s dark and seedy story allowed for clear distinction between choice and consequence; and the release of the game’s developer tools gave many the ability to create their own custom maps and stories for the world to play.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Traditional Japanese RPGs have made huge strides over the last decade to intentionally stagnate and devolve, or worse yet, remain exactly the same. Sure, some have broken through that stigma and proved that this dying sub-genre still has a pulse – games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Resonance of Fate have shown that you can mutate the formula and still create deep, engrossing games without losing what makes the jRPG so special. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch does this in spades, but ironically, without changing too much. Combat is a generous mix of real-time and turn-based, an assimilation of Pokémon and a Tales of game. But it’s the game’s outstanding art direction, its brilliant cast of characters, and its exceptional music and voice acting that elevate this into a pantheon co-inhabited by the likes of Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy Tactics: games that, at their core, have the heart to tell a mature story through the eyes of children.

Shin Megami Tensei IV

  

Speaking of Japanese RPGs, Shin Megami Tensei IV is another to have just narrowly missed out on being included in my top 5 of the year, not for any other reason than because the ones that did make it are just that good. The MegaTen series has become my favorite longstanding series, ever since I first played Digital Devil Saga on a sheer whim, and if you don't believe me just take a look at the retrospective I wrote of the series last month. What these games prove is that you can take a rather simple formula and evolve it just enough so that no two games are identical, but still retain the DNA of its predecessor. Couple that with some of the darkest, most twisted stories about demons and high school students, God versus the Devil, and total annihilation of the world, and the Shin Megami Tensei games are the perfect antidote for the jaded Final Fantasy fan. What SMT IV brought to the table was the series’ staple difficulty and its relentless attempts to make the player give up. But persevere, and you will find an experience like no other.

Tomb Raider

If you would have asked me a few years ago whether I still cared about the Tomb Raider series, or Lara Croft, I would have laughed at you. Barring this release, the only game that had me remotely interested in either was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, a 2010 action-platformer more akin to Diablo than anything else this series had to offer. But earlier this year, the team at Crystal Dynamics proved that you can still teach an old dog new tricks. Borrowing from the Uncharted series, which in turn borrowed from Tomb Raider, this franchise reboot featured a much more grounded Lara Croft put into a series of extraordinarily dangerous situations as a fledgling adventurer shipwrecked on a strange island. Where the dashing Nathan Drake of Uncharted would respond to his adversaries with clever quips, or brush off an injury or some sort of terrible fall like a pro wrestler, Lara felt real – human. Her pain was excruciating, and if there was one way to describe the evolution of her character, then Crystal Dynamics has already done it with the very tagline of this game – a survivor is born.

 Coming up tomorrow: Why Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and many others are not going to be on my list