2013 was a very good year for games. There were two of the biggest console launches in history, and a plethora of good games. Unfortunately, I am only one person and I don't have any money, so I did not play many new games last year. When I did buy games I made sure to pick wisely and was rewarded with some of the most amazing experiences in my gaming career.
So without further ado, here are my 5 favorite games from 2013.
5. Rogue Legacy
Rogue Legacy is the best kind of hard. It's not the kind of unforgiving, kick-you-in-the-balls kind of ridiculous like the arcade games of the past. Rogue Legacy is certainly unforgiving, but not because it wants your quarters. The randomly generated Castle Hamson wants to toughen you up. It wants to challenge you at every turn. It wants you to die, and sometimes you want to die too.
Dying is a very important part of Rogue Legacy, because all of the gold you collect will be inherited by your son or daughter, who uses it to buy new armor or upgrade skills. If you have an exact number in mind, as soon as you reach that goal, you can say "screw it" and get yourself killed by a flaming skull. Your descendants can have ADHD, see in black and white, or walk on the ceiling. Choosing your armor attributes, which skills to flesh out, and what type of descendant you play as, along with the fact that the game world is randomized with every death, can dramatically change every playthrough. Beating Rogue Legacy only took me about 15 hours, but it stuck with me as a wicked-fun new take on the old-school kind of hard.
4. Pokemon X
Like an overwhelming majority (I hope) of kids born in the 90's, Pokemon defined my childhood. The games, the cards, the show; I was all over it. Looking back at the franchise now, "Gotta Catch 'Em All" is the most hilariously blatant ploy to get kids to buy every piece of merchandise, and we all fell for it. Fortunately, I don't regret any of that for a second, because the new main entries in the series, X and Y, prove that Pokemon still totally kicks ass.
Pokemon X is the first Pokemon game I've played since 2003's Ruby & Sapphire that feels like a totally new experience. Diamond was a large graphical leap forward, and Black & White had... more Pokemon, I guess, but the first Pokemon games on the 3DS really evolve (pun intended) the franchise to something that I think fans old and new should really enjoy.
I have to confess that I really miss the pixelated graphics and chiptune music of the Gameboy era, but you can't deny that the 3D graphics (the visuals, not the gimmick that gives people headaches) look great and bring the Pokemon to life. I thought moving diagonally was blasphemous at first, but now it just seems to make sense. The list of new Pokemon is really short. The changes to the battle system are great. They finally brought back mixing old Pokemon with new ones from the start, not only after beating the Champion. I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. Pokemon X is fantastic.
3. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
I hadn't enjoyed an Assassin's Creed game since 2009's Assassin's Creed 2. Brotherhood and Revelations were lazy expansions with the same bogus story, and holy hell if Assassin's Creed 3 wan't the most slowly paced video game in history. I never got past the tutorials, which take about ten hours. That's why I never bought Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. I had lost faith in the franchise, and was waiting for Ubisoft to pull the plug. I got a free copy of Black Flag when I bought a new GPU for my PC, and I regret all the time I spent dissing it.
Have you played The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker? Of course you have, it's the best Zelda game ever! Now take Wind Waker, add lots of violence and language, guns, whale harpooning, and gambling and you've got Assassin's Creed IV. It's overloaded with cool places to explore, forts to capture, ships to plunder, and shanties to sing. The game rewards exploration much like the Zelda franchise, and I appreciate that the game finally encourages and rewards stealthiness, something I felt hasn't been I key part of the gameplay since the very first AC game. It's an ADHD wet dream, and I can spend hours getting detracted from the main storyline because the game incessantly provides a new and insanely fun endeavor to embark on.
It's weird to say this about one of the most successful game franchises of the last ten years, but Assassin's Creed was my "surprise hit" of 2013.
2. Gone Home
Gone Home has been the center of a lot of heated discussion since it came out. The main argument about it is basically "is it really a game, or an interactive story?" You play as Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 21 year-old girl from Oregon. She spent an entire year traveling Europe, and arrives late on a rainy night to the new home her family moved into while she was gone. It's a home she's never been in before - and is discovering it at the same pace as the player - but still has to call home. Nobody is home, and your (sorry, her, I get really caught up in the story) younger Samantha sister seems to have run away. The basis of the game from that point on is simply to A) find out what your family has been up to for the past year, and B) find out where the hell Sam went. Also it's 1995, which makes everything cooler.
I don't want to tell you anything else beyond that, because you need to play Gone Home. Don't look up anything about it. Don't ask your friends about it or they'll spoil it. Just buy and play it. If you can lend your imagination and emotions to the story you're unraveling through simple clues and scraps of paper, you will be rewarded with one of the most beautiful and moving experiences that a video game can possibly provide you with.
1. The Last of Us
If you played any video games in 2013, The Last of Us should have been one of them. If you play only one video game from the last console generation, it should be The Last of Us. Naughty Dog, one of the greatest video game developers of all time, has created an absolute masterpiece with their latest game. The grim story of Joel and Ellie's journey across the United States decades after a virus wiped out most of civilization is perhaps the greatest story ever told in a game. Unlike Gone Home, you don't need to give the game any kind of open mindedness to enjoy it. The story grabs you from the first twenty minutes and never lets go.
Along with the touching and heart-wrenching story, the gameplay of The Last of Us is also top notch. Superb level design along with startlingly good enemy AI make every encounter a slow-paced, terrifying struggle for survival. Scavenging for ammo and supplies builds on the desperate post-apocalyptic atmosphere. The multiplayer also does well to carry the cat-and-mouse gameplay from the singleplayer and can be a whole lot of fun. But still, at the end of the day the star of the show is the story, made all the better with the best visuals ever seen on consoles of the last generation and the best acting and performance capture in the business.
The Last of Us is the reason video games are around today. It's a beautiful creation from the hearts and minds of the people that made it, and Naughty Dog spared no expense to make their vision a reality. Not only is it fun to play, but it's utterly engaging from the start and does something truly unique with a medium that has existed for decades. The Last of Us is as close to a perfect game as I can imagine. It is one of the greatest video games of all time.
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