Rerolled Games of the Year - 2013

Vorph

Vorph

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Ah, I hadn't seen a confirmation of what the DLC will be. As long as it's not post-game Ellie, I guess I'm fine with that. I don't see myself buying it unless people are raving about how good it is, however.


Just noticed this up above:

Man0warr_sl said:
Do you guys that didn't like Ni no Kuni not like Ghibli stories/themes? I agree the combat and AI wasn't top notch but visuals/story/music (basically what Ghibli was in charge of) were all A+ which was enough to drag the gameplay up for me. However if you don't like Ghibli then it was probably disappointing compared to the hype.
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I've watched all the Ghibli movies and like them a lot, though I'll admit that the written-by-Neil-Gaiman dub of Mononoke is my favorite by a huge margin.

I've never seen any confirmation of your claim that Ghibli handled anything in the game besides some art assets and the fully-animated cutscenes. According to what I read about the game back when I played it, including interviews with the developers, Level-5 was responsible for everything else.

Either way though, the gameplay, AI, handholding, and godawful 'sidequests' were more than enough to ruin the rest of the game for me even if it had been not only entirely Ghibli's work, but their best work to date. I simply couldn't stand playing the game for a moment longer.
 
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rasstapp_sl

shitlord
345
4
Haven't played that many new titles this year, my backlog is huge, and I've been enjoying replaying old games and "classics" instead of new ones.

That being said, game of the year for me is easily Black flag, it's awesomsauce. Gameplaywise it's the best assassins creed by far, story not so much, but makes up for it with just awesome, awesome gameplay. I wasn't too impressed with the naval missions in AC3, so I'm really impressed with how Ubi pulled this of and improved it. Also it's exciting with the possibilities going forward, both the different settings hinted at for future AC-games, and of course a pure pirate-game.

Enjoyed BNW immensely, a logical expansion for CIV 5.

And I gotta give a shoutout for Teslagrad, indie-platformer a friend of mine worked on, just released, and getting rave reviews so far, I haven't gotten around to playing it myself though, ofc.


Oh, and candyrush ruined my life, but that was prolly released before 2013?
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W

Wrathcaster

Can't believe X: Rebirth didn't get mentioned yet.

Seriously, this is one of the greatest clusterfucks to ever clusterfuck. After playing through X3: Terran Conflict I realized just how horrific of a direction they took the series in. Only one ship to fly in a series previously renowned for giving the player hundreds of options for ships and ship types, differing roles and weapon loadouts, etc. The X series has one of the most intensive micromanagement game of any series, and they decide to make it impossibly difficult by designing the game for a controller and neglecting to adequately support joysticks in a space sim. Then there's the quite glaring evidence the game was meant to be an Xbox game, with tons of mention of 360 in lines of code, and then shittily porting the thing to PC when the whole console thing fell apart. The absolutely astounding horrible design decisions throughout every aspect of the game from top to bottom. Even the quite beautiful graphics in space are ruined by abysmal performance and frequent crashes, not to mention the trademark atrocious AI.

DayZ standalone gets a nod from me simply for the fact that it's quite possibly the most unforgiving alphas in terms of gameplay and player interactions, and also the fact that the fucker finally hit the shelves. Also, the creator outright recommending people NOT to buy and play the thing at all. It's fairly rare to see a developer discourage people from buying a game, especially considering the trend of releasing betas/alphas as supposed finished products these days (Hi BF4/Simcity!). I honestly can't remember a developer doing anything like that before.
 
Ritley

Ritley

Karazhan Raider
15,719
34,246
Man0warr_sl said:
Do you guys that didn't like Ni no Kuni not like Ghibli stories/themes? I agree the combat and AI wasn't top notch but visuals/story/music (basically what Ghibli was in charge of) were all A+ which was enough to drag the gameplay up for me. However if you don't like Ghibli then it was probably disappointing compared to the hype.
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For me it was a combination of boring combat, terrible AI, slow story and horrible voice acting. I really wanted it to be good since there weren't many jrpgs released on consoles this year. I actually enjoyed the art style for the most part.

My top game was definitely TLoU.
 
Soygen

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,326
43,170
For me TLOU is my clear GOTY. I haven't ever felt that invested in a video game story. It's a decent game that is really taken to the next level with the direction and acting of the plot.

Runner-up is AC4:BF. I love everything about it.
 
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Sean_sl

shitlord
4,735
11
Hatorade_sl said:
Dec 4th 2012, my bad. Then Bioshock Infinite it is, to be fair I have yet to play "Last of Us" or GTA V.
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Unfortunately that date made FC3 arbitrarily cut off for the VGAs and other bullshit awards. FC3 was the clear winner of 2012, imo. Far Cry 3 was a far, farrrrrr better video game than shit that won it all over the place like The Walking Dead.
 
Fadaar

Fadaar

That guy
10,473
11,410
I admittedly haven't played a whole lot of games this year, but for me it would have to be The Last of Us as #1, Bioshock Infinite #2, GTA5 #3. Nothing else I played really stands out enough to get a mention.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
For mine....

#1: Assassin's Creed IV - Explanation has already been done by enough people for me.
#2: Bioshock Infinite - Sean covered my feelings pretty well.
#3: Etrian Odyssey IV - Superb, nostalgic RPG to the old days of Might & Magic: Worlds of Xeen and the Wizardry that I'm playing compulsively. (Note: Just got the demo for EO: Untold and it looks even better BY LEAGUES, but with only the demo I don't feel right saying it as an official opinion)

I still say that Dead Space 3 is unfairly maligned though - sure it wasn't survival horror anymore and switched more towards a generic sci fi sort of thing - but without mixing the formula up too much it was going to be hard to go that far into it. And the lore additions I felt were pretty neat. Was it great? No. But it was decent - definitely not "shitlist" deserving - just mediocre. I'd toss it at one tier below RE6, another passable not really survival horror anymore title that was just a little more solid.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Sean_sl said:
Unfortunately that date made FC3 arbitrarily cut off for the VGAs and other bullshit awards. FC3 was the clear winner of 2012, imo. Far Cry 3 was a far, farrrrrr better video game than shit that won it all over the place like The Walking Dead.
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I picked it up during this Steam sale, while pretty good I can't help but feel like it's the "Ubisoft game: FPS edition" If they made it a bit tighter instead of implementing so much open world fucking around, I think it would be a better game. It's good because I chose to ignore 95% of the stupid minigames, not because it does shooting better than others. The tattoos and hunting are to FC3 what the Animus/generic white protagonist backstory is to AC.
 
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Sean_sl

shitlord
4,735
11
Vaclav_sl said:
I still say that Dead Space 3 is unfairly maligned though - sure it wasn't survival horror anymore and switched more towards a generic sci fi sort of thing - but without mixing the formula up too much it was going to be hard to go that far into it. And the lore additions I felt were pretty neat. Was it great? No. But it was decent - definitely not "shitlist" deserving - just mediocre. I'd toss it at one tier below RE6, another passable not really survival horror anymore title that was just a little more solid.
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Dead Space 3 was 100% absolutely fucking shitlist deserving. EA fucking shit all over the franchise. The Survival Horror elements were completely gone, the difficulty was a joke, the game rained ammo and health packs down on you no matter what difficulty you played on, the encounter design was horrid, the weapon combining crap was dull as hell and completely killed the identity of the cool weapons of the series, there were retarded BUY ME Microtransactions right on every workbench, the list goes on.
 
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Man0warr

Molten Core Raider
2,265
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I've never seen any confirmation of your claim that Ghibli handled anything in the game besides some art assets and the fully-animated cutscenes. According to what I read about the game back when I played it, including interviews with the developers, Level-5 was responsible for everything else.
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Only thing I claimed they did was the art (and cutscenes) and music - and the story was obviously following Ghibli's themes but I don't think they directly wrote it. The worst parts of the game were totally on Level 5 though.
 
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Sean_sl

shitlord
4,735
11
Heh, I did not have any Gameplay problems with Ni no Kuni at all (besides the annoying hand-holding tooltip pop ups). I think people's experiences with the game's combat and such largely differ based on what Pokemons you used, because that made a huge difference in the enjoyability of it. Some seemed to work just way better with party AI and hit boxes and movement and all that crap.
 
DickTrickle

DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
12,941
14,847
Just started The Last of Us. Was playing Saint's Row 2 just before that and it's amazing how much Naughty Dog has gotten out of the system. Also instantly enamored with TLoU -- I was walking around right in the beginning and bump into a soldier. He tells me that if I do that again he'll put a bullet in my head. So, naturally, I bump into him again and to my surprise he actually blows my brains out. Haha, awesome.
 
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Crell_sl

shitlord
133
1
Sean_sl said:
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds- This might be the best Zelda game ever made. For me, it's certainly the best Zelda game since A Link to the Past. There's no hand holding at all, not even the tiniest bit of it. The game just throws you into a Zelda world, just like LttP, and tells you to have at it. I wasn't sure I would be down with the whole "rental system" when I first heard about it, but it's actually incredibly well done when you actually play with it. The Freedom to do whatever you want in this game is great and there is so much to do. It's also definitely not just a retread of LttP, even though it looks like it on the surface. It is definitely a new game with a ton of new content and fantastic mechanics. The gameplay is perfect. If you don't have a 3DS yet - go buy oneright fucking nowand get this game.
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100% this. Got a 3DS XL (missed the boat in the LE Zelda 3DS, will probably ebay one at some point) for this game. It woke up the 10 year old me when I first play LttP. I didn't care much for the rental system at first, since the whole fun for me in a Zelda game is finding items. But it did work well. It's still the low point of the game for me, but it's not a huge low point by any means. It did help open up the world and let you do whatever, instead of having to follow a linear path.
 
ohkcrlho

ohkcrlho

Silver Baronet of the Realm
6,906
8,941
best:
-The Last of Us
-Bioshock:Infinite
-GTA V
-Metro Last Light

worst:
-Aliens Colonial Marines (i think i don't have to say anything)
-Dead Space 3 (bad story,was not scary at all)
-Crysis 3 (so confusing....producers are getting very sloppy)
-Splinter Cell:Blacklist (it became another COD)

"Honorable" mention:
-StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm (the story was already fucked but good god,they actually fucked it up even more)
 
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