T w e n t y S i d e d

And now for my top five games of 2013. Remember that the order here is pretty loose, and in a different mood I might present them in some other order.

Note also that I’m not doing a “worst games of 2013” list. There’s not that much for me to hate, really. Batman: Arkham Origins was flawed, but not horrible. I avoided Aliens: Colonial Marines, SimCity, Ride to Hell: Retribution, and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, which were the real stinkers this year.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2013: Part 2”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

The last few years have been dubbed “year of the indies” by various people. (Maybe even me. I don’t recall.) Minecraft was a smash hit, so it was year of the indies. Then The Walking Dead swept the GOTY lists, so it was year of the indies. Well I’m calling THIS year the year of the indies, and if next year is somehow even MORE indie then I don’t know what we’ll call it.

This year is significant because this is the first time my end-of-year list is mostly indie titles. It’s one thing to have a couple of exceptional indies elbow their way onto the stage, but it’s another when you can’t see most of the AAA games because there are too dang many indies in the way.

And it’s not that this was a dud year for AAA games, either. (Note that my last-gen consoles are dead and gone, so I didn’t get to play GTA V or Last of Us yet.) We had some solid titles. It’s just that the games I’m playing and thinking about are mostly indie this year. Is this the start of a trend? Is this just an odd year? Will indies stand out again? Will the industry continue to fracture into more niche markets? Will the freshly minted generation of console hardware herald new and exciting titles that will overshadow the indie market?

I have no idea. Ask me again in eleven months.

This is nominally my “game of the year” list, but don’t read too much into the order. I loved both Gone Home and Tomb Raider, but I have no idea how to sort them in a relative sense. It’s easier when you’re sorting the “worst of” lists, since you can rate games based on how angry they made you. But appraising greatness among disparate items is folly. Which is better: Kung-fu movies, ice cream, or Orbital? Depends on when you ask me.

My criteria for being on this list was that a game should either have lasting ideas of lasting gameplay. If I came back to a game again and again, it was list-worthy. If I was still thinking and talking about a game a month after I played it, it was list-worthy. If I played a game, finished it, and never went back to it, then it wasn’t considered for the list.

So here is what I thought was noteworthy or admirable in 2013, in a numbered list where the numbers aren’t really that important.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2013: Part 1”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.