Finishing with 3D plats, vehicle action, and GOTY - Part 2 of 2019 in review

Why doesn't anyone talk about Ape Escape, easily one of the top 10 and probably one of the top 5 3D platformers ever made? Yeah, the sequel is mush (I didn't bother continuing onto Ape Escape 3), but the original's tight focus on dual analog mechanics and evolution of collectibles into enemies with unique behavior paves a path for 3D action that was never followed up. Comparing this to Banjo-Kazooie (where I made the 100% clear with the assistance of the unimpeachable WarioFan63) is like comparing homemade ravioli in lamb ragu to a cold can of spaghetti-Os. The sixth console generation relegated the right analog stick entirely to camera control; Ape Escape posits a world that didn't need to be that way. Full-on dual-analog action games are something to consider for the future. (Keep in mind that the greatest 3D platformer series of all time, Super Mario, has always gotten by just fine without a camera stick). Other major 3D platformers cleaned up were Spyro (very solid), de Blob 2 (de Blob 2 long), Jumping Flash! 2 (identical to the first), and Psychonauts (not my thing). There's a ranking of the all-time top fifty 3D platformers coming sometime in the new year. And shout-out to Candleman, an awesome indie game from China doing something absolutely no one else in 2019 is doing - being a 3D plat that isn't a Banjo-Kazooie fangame.

To return to Psychonauts for a moment, I've added a new category to my table - forfeited games. Ones which will take too much effort to finish, or offer so little new information, that they just aren't worth wasting more time upon. Some of this year's forfeits were games that had been sitting on the list for years untouched - Axiom Verge and Popful Mail, both taken on only as part of the Commune - and the other three fill me with such utter disdain that they didn't seem worth the mood penalty - Psychonauts, Battalion Wars, and Rayman. Still, I'm reserving forfeits for games 1.) that have been half-cleared 2.) that I played at the behest of others, and 3.) that I severely dislike. It's a last resort.

Racing, flying, and all that great vehicle shit - these are the games I live for these days. Birds of Steel should've been the game of the year, as I finally wrapped my head around energy fighting and how to use a plane's traits to guide strategy (best represented by figuring out why everyone likes the Corsair so much - you don't fly it like a Spitfire). I knocked out the first three Aces Combat in what must've been January, since they seem such a distant memory. We got as close as we're going to get to a new Armored Core game in 2019 with Daemon X Machina - though I don't like the idea of using loot for tuning and the framerate can be a bit slow, it otherwise provides a great weapon set almost worthy of the almighty Custom Robo. Rogue Squadron on Steam was fun to revisit, more of an on-rails style Star Fox game thanks to the heavy use of linear canyon design, though it's ostensibly free-roaming. And the Commune played Pilotwings, ever the meditative experience.

GRID Autosport was my first real go at a racing sim - the previous two Codemasters games I played are the simcade ones, and though I love them quite a bit, Autosport clearly is operating on a far more nuanced level, showcasing that modern racing is really about how to use the brake. An important technique I picked up along the way is using an analog stick for acceleration/braking, which (for my hands at least) offers a finer level of control than analog triggers. I guess you could also call this the year of the right analog stick. I finished off the EAD racing line with F-Zero and Stunt Racing FX on the Nintendo Switch SNES Online, the former an unending frustration and the latter a treat that really deserves the Sega Ages treatment (as do all the Super FX games). Once I figured out how to driftcelerate I was also able to clear the hard modes of F-Zero X, a weird detail that makes me slightly less confident in calling it EAD's best.

But GOATY was not Birds of Steel, nor any of these others, but a game which is much narrower, a game with level design so tightly tuned that it is almost indistinguishable from the mechanical design, with dynamics worthy of any arcade-style action game, yet bounded such that they never overwhelm the universal technique driving the entire experience, none other than Virtua Racing. Specifically the Sega Ages variant, which takes a design that was perfect in its original form and upgrades the presentation not to match modern standards, but to let that design shine through all the more clearly. M2 didn't upgrade the game, they did something even better - stripped out all the downgrades, be they draw distance, framerate, or price. Around October I was thinking I'd pick Sega Ages Outrun for doing basically the same thing, in that case with a game I never liked to begin with and was finally for the first time able to grasp (also thanks to some graphing I did that makes me think I should be applying mathematical methods to game decoding more frequently). But the subsequent 120 hours of V.R. can't be ignored.

Some epochal FPSs slipped in there (Turok: DH and DOOM 3) and some not so epochal (Quake 4 and Battlefield Bad Company 2).

Gradii, Mega Man reboots, and 2D action - Part 1 of 2019 in review

In the year of our lord 2019 I completed 43 games, I believe exactly the same total as 2018. I'm not going to talk about the "games started" metric anymore - I've been trying that out a while and I just don't think it adds any useful information. The theme of this year was cleanup: cleaning up the list one chunk at a time.

First the co-op plays - Golem and I started the year on Hitman 2, the rare title so utterly useless we abandoned it halfway through - a guess-what-I'm-thinking adventure/strategy game that doesn't even have the courtesy to tell you when you guessed right. Adventure games use locks and keys to direct progression, strategy games use numerical metrics, Hitman 2 has neither. It's a completely unordered mess, a guess-if-you-guessed-what-I'm-thinking game. Things took a turn for the better with Mega Man Maverick Hunter X, the PSP remake of Mega Man X. The core gameplay of the best Mega Man is hard to ruin, though the gigantic new weapon set is the type of playground I'd love at age 12 but lacks the challenge I now prefer. The second Mega Man reboot of the year was Mega Man 11, the first since X2 to provide a decent contest for best in the series. The superhoned buster weapons and tightly tuned boss fights make this the first I genuinely want to call a run-and-gun (which is to say, a game more about bullets and aiming than about gravity and timing). Mega Man Legends was the third of the set, a strangely orthogonal leap for the series that is good at rivaling Zelda for a Playstation game, but still not great at rivaling Zelda. The element design is high quality, but Golem would say it's badly proportioned (too many weapons and too few enemies), and I'd say it's lacking in structure. Some sense of what will comprise a session is doubly important with content that demands experimentation (Volnutt's arsenal) - the player wants to be able to answer "when should I try this out?", "when should I switch?", and "when am I going to get a new one?".

I'm burying the lede. The largest and best part of our sessions in 2019 were the co-op 1CCs, first of Bio-Hazard Battle and then Gradius Gaiden (links to replays). BHB is a real gem of concrete design, the kind of game that looks and sounds like nothing around it, even if the shooting gameplay is fairly simple. Absolutely worth picking up a Genesis collection to try out. (Golem thought it was lame, but he's blind and deaf and plays games by smell alone). Gradius Gaiden was like learning a beautiful dance; a beautiful dance that you perform with a man. Truth be told, it was probably the instant startback offered by co-op mode (like Life Force) that made this so much more approachable and enjoyable than other Gradii. I'll reserve any more comment on Gaiden, as we're presently working on a commentary track for the game that'll be posted here and on Golem's Youtube when complete.

Onto solo clears - for shmups proper it was a light year, with just a few runs of the unspeakably easy Deathsmiles II X and a closeout of the NES Gradius. It's hard to say I've completed the Deathsmiles games, as I enjoy their scoring systems so much that I'd like to eventually play competitively. But my BFS mind won't let me settle down til I've cleared the majority of the Cave catalog, and that's a long way to go. Gradius was a 1LC mostly because there's simply no other way to play. Golem says hit points are a good thing for a shooter, and it took me clearing Gradius to understand why I've never felt the same. Gradation of punishment makes sense, but the problem with the shield system present throughout the series is that it absorbs an aribtrary number of hits not one-to-one with mistakes - or mistakes are judged at a much finer level than my ability to register - so punishment isn't graded by the severity of the mistake, but largely at random. That's complicated even further by the variable speed, which can carry you through more bullets for the same input if it's set higher. That is to say, it's very easy to make a single mistake (say, dodging a bullet in the wrong direction) and take three hits, and then later to make the same mistake and take only one hit, or none at all. This is not only poor feedback, it also undermines planning for errors. If you know there's an area you're likely to make errors, but don't know how harshly those errors will be punished, how do you use the power-up system to plan for that? I don't know, so beating Gradius required a zero tolerance approach. Setting that aside, it has good, clear level themes, and runs exactly the right length for a shooter (~20-30 minutes).

The more difficult classic clears I put aside were in the Contra Anniversary Collection and the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. With Hard Corps available for the first time digitally I had to 1CC that, and NES Contra followed. Though I wouldn't tag them with the 1CC label, I also made it through Belmont's Revenge and Kid Dracula for the first time, and more importantly, the white whale is dead! Castlevania III haunts my conscience no longer. (Then I made it about halfway through Lament of Innocence and kind of lost interest, it's a boring one. I'll be back to it later. It's uncomfortable to admit that that was the closest I came to a beat-em-up clear all year). While we're still talking classic 2D, I ran the original Klonoa - one of the all-time greats - and 100%ed New Super Mario Wii U Luigi Bros. Deluxe.

Tomorrow: the 3D lineup from the past year.

Game game game of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar Awards!!!!!!!!!!!! Part 2

Continued from yesterday. You can see the rules in that post - remember, the top three are picks of games I played for the first time in 2013, not games that were released in 2013.

Game game game of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar Awards!!!!!!!!!!!! 2013 Ed.

Special Baby Retard Category: Best Game released in 2013

You folks asked for it, so here it is: my vote for best game that was released in 2013. The reason I would never bother orienting a peer-to-teen choice awards contest around this idea alone is that I don't actually play enough games that come out in any given year to choose anything even remotely representative of "best of that year". I played maybe 20 of the, I dunno, 500+ (mainstream) releases of 2013. I'm not gonna judge a game I haven't played, no matter how much I've read about it. That's why... well, I'm not going to criticize the big boys. I'm sure they know what they're doing and they have their integrity and we all respect that. Anyway, the second runner-up to Best Game Released in 2013 WOULD HAVE TO BE:

#3: Killer Is Dead, Xbox 360, Grasshopper Manufacture, 2013

It's action. Reaction. Random interaction. Now who's afraid of a little abstraction?

Not I. And neither should be you. I like a nice formal narrative. Okay, does it really count as formalism versus bland David Lynch symbolism when a guy's secret twin brother appears in his dream and slices his breakfast of a single fried egg perfectly in two? No, but that's exactly what makes it funny! There's a fine line Suda walks here between depth and mockery, and that's what makes for great satire. Killer works as a compelling mystery of its own, carefully exploring the facets of Mondo Zappa's buried psyche, and also takes every opportunity to send up the video game industry's self-seriousness about sexuality while being incredibly sexist (see the Gigolo segments), existentialism while being incredibly preposterous (see the Alice-meets-lobster boss), and even bromance while being incredibly... bromantic (see the hilarious Gears of War mission). I must admit I wasn't left wanting for more of Killer Is Dead's combat, but it was fun while it lasted and tough enough that there was mastery on offer. [I also have to comment that my combat fatigue is probably more a testament to having played too many of this type of action game in the past year or two... Killer Is Dead is more unique than Platinum fare, but doesn't transcend the crowd like Arkham Asylum or No More Heroes 2] Considering that the game is nice and short (praise short!), looks like a impressionist painting, and has a soundtrack ranging from thrash to hip-hop to classical remixes (by Akira Yamaoka of course), it certainly justifies further plays to investigate the themes.

#2 DmC: Devil may Cry, Xbox 360, Ninja Theory, 2013

S-Stutter!!!!

Certainly this is one of the combat action games of the generation. This is combat that derives its depth from clever reactivity, the ability of the player to quickly analyze a split-second situation and be prepared with which tools can be deployed to handle it. Those tools are what make DmC particularly rewarding - like the original Devil May Cry, this isn't a game where you'll be stressing to remember which combo string does what and spending hours mastering the input timing to pull it off (a la Bayonetta or BlazBlue) - DmC is based around simple inputs with wildly varying results. If you want to play a game where you fight demons with swords and guns, it is hard to pick one that will make you feel more powerful and graceful than this. The chains (uh, physical chains that is, not combo chains) that pull Dante or enemies across the battlefield add such speed, dynamism, and - yes - chaos to the battles that you'll never feel you're repeating the same conflicts, and the bit of platforming they provide between fights strings the adventure along all the more fluidly. I may not have been a huge fan of the story, but few players will have time to worry about that amidst the endless combat variations. In fact, this is kinda the opposite of Killer Is Dead - where there the story inspires replays that the gameplay is just good enough to support, here the story is successfully kept out of the way enough not to ruin a first play-through which is sure to inspire more gameplay-based reruns. The stages are loaded with unique enemy combinations and scenarios that'll draw you back for score- (and collection-) based runs.

#1: Bit.Trip Runner 2: The Legend Runs On, XBLA, Gaijin Games, 2013

It's actually called Bit.Trip Presents... Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. For those worried about copyright infringement. If that's how that works.

I actually like my name better than the real one. Can we do anything about that? Tim? Name change? Tim's giving me a no. Runner 2 is the type of sequel that does exactly what the Bit.Trip series wasn't all about. Bit.Trip told a succinct and fluid story through gameplay, music, imagery, and a tiny handful of abstract cutscenes. Gaijin didn't have time for a typical video game sequel that reiterated gameplay concepts with better graphics, more songs, multiple playable characters, a world map, and dancing. They had an artistic vision to uphold. But people loved Bit.Trip Runner and they didn't give a shit about Artistic Vision: The Game, so Runner 2 is exactly that typical sequel I described. Thing is, as far below the genius of the original saga as it is, it's still an absolute blast. It is everything an arcade-style rhythm platformer could hope to be, overflowing with charm, style, gorgeous visuals, toe-tappin' tunes, a great sense of humor (if you like pickles), and one HELL of an addictive structure. I couldn't stop playing for days, and the game is cleverly crafted arcade greatness that always allows room for improvement while still providing multiple levels of satisfaction for skilled runs.

This is the epitome of a fun video game - one that is memorable and delightful even for unskilled players, and a sensory treat that demands mastery.

AND FINALLY: GOTYE 2013

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the moment has arrived. It is time to unveil my three very favorite games I played in the last year that every single one of you should go out and play right this very instant. The second runner-up, bronze-medalist, almost as good as the other ones Game of the Year 2013 IS:

#3: Mark of the Ninja, XBLA, Klei, 2012

Playing to terrify guards is one of the most challenging and satisfying strategies

Mark of the Ninja is a game that knows what it wants to be. It's a ninja game and it's a stealth game and it's a platformer. It's not a stealth-platformer starring a ninja. It's a ninja game and it's a stealth game and it's a platformer. To clarify the seemingly arbitrary semantic distinction I'm making here: over the course of the game, Klei cranks up all of its design elements independently and allows the player to choose how to approach each situation using distinctive gameplay methods. Your "tools" aren't just a set of interchangeable maguffins like night-vision goggles and lazer trip wires, they're gameplay styles like "slow and strategic, using items" or "fast as possible using precisely timed jumps". This gives the game an almost Sonic-the-Hedgehog-high-path-low-path feel, where knowledge, skill mastery, and choices can be applied to result in a totally different gameplay payoff. It's amazing how naturally Klei pulled this off without ever making the game feel like a series of discrete choices. Partly that owes to the stealth framework, wherein a mistake gives the player a chance to adapt (as in Sonic when a player falls to a lower path) rather than immediately sending them back to an earlier checkpoint. There's so much variable gameplay here, especially once the extra playable characters (costumes) are thrown into the mix. This game demonstrates that there are still new ways to do the classic platformer (without just throwing in puzzles, fuck you "indie" gaming). [it wasn't my #1 platformer just cuz I wanted to make it clear it was one of my absolute favorite games of the year, transcending genre, and that everyone should play it].

#2: Retro Game Challenge, Nintendo DS, indieszero, 2009/2007(JP)

This is such a great total experience that was completely undersold by everyone who pitched it as an anthology of faux-classics or a nostalgia trip. Retro Game Challenge is the story of two Japanese kids (one of whom happens to be a young Shinya Arino) growing up in the late '80s indulging in video game culture. The beauty of the game doesn't come from the neo-retro "8-bit" games (which are a dime a dozen these days anyway), it comes from the fictionalized experience of anticipating a new game, finally getting your hands on it, sitting down and going nuts trying to master it, reading magazines with fan letters and hints, and going through the entire cycle again with the next game. It's meta as hell, but it's a game about the experience of being a gamer, set in an idealized time we imagine as more optimistic and which many of us associate with our youth. Still, I think this experience would resonate with anyone who's ever been excited about games. The fact that you actually get to dig into eight cool original titles (that are just as fun as those they're based upon) is really just a bonus. 

#1: Ys: The Oath in Felghana, PC/Steam, Falcom 2012/2005(JP)

Oath is actually a remake of the SNES/Genesis/Turbo16 Ys III

This game made me so happy. I don't know how else to put it. I just felt extreme, unadulterated happiness every time I sat down to play it. Okay, that made it sound a little creepy. But there's a child-like sweetness to Oath in Felghana, a romantic simplicity to the classic story of innocence lost that pairs wonderfully with the gung-ho "cool" metal and hardcore action that characterizes the game's underworld. I think I can best explain it using the soundtrack. The game goes from the track on the left when you first arrive in town to the track on the right when you're in a dungeon. That's the span.

    

It's just... a perfectly straightforward, honest video game. It's a fairy tale, not an epic, a stylized adventure that serves theme over story or character. If there is action, there are fucking wailing guitars. If there is sensitive stuff, there are sad violins. The dialogue and cut-scenes are just enough to carry a through-line, the rest is entirely mood.

The essentially-one-button action follows that fuck-it-just-get-to-the-point mentality. Just because it's button-mashing doesn't mean it's easy or mindless - your character is so fragile and everything moves so quickly that you'll need to learn enemy patterns and probably die (or at least restart dungeons - no healing items here) a lot of times to perfect your skills. Once you get it down you'll feel like a steamroller completely crushing everything in your path - until, of course, you hit the shmup-style bosses with their strict patterned mechanics. Will you have to match your magic charge attacks to a color-changing boss' periods of vulnerability while dodging his attacks specifically designed to capitalize on that element's weakness? Or perhaps you'll be up against a trio of spirits who adapt their aggression as you pick them off? There's even a side-perspective 2D fight that had me thinking of Castlevania. The boss fights are the game's absolute highlights, calling back to the style of classic Treasure and Konami action. 

Ys: The Oath in Felghana is my game of the year because it captures what is for me the absolute essence of a video game experience. It immediately puts all the cards on the table and develops challenges from established mechanics, putting me into a continuous state of adaptation. Each situation is a puzzle in and of itself, fun to learn because of the enjoyable core action and a different kind of fun once perfected because of the uniqueness of the setting. The fighting is contextualized with a concise, purposeful story about the consequences of action and responsibility and adorned with a sweeping, roaring soundtrack and minutely detailed graphics that bring the game's inhabitants to life. The action doesn't have to be the greatest ever conceived nor the tale the greatest ever told for the experience as a whole to be what every action/adventure should aspire to parallel. 

Game game game of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar Awards!!!!!!!!!!!! Part 1

I totally forgot that I wrote 50% of this back in December then it got shelved during the hiatus. So it's time for...........

Game game game of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar Awards!!!!!!!!!!!! 2013 Ed.

Alright. I know I'm excited. So in order to make this extra pointless, this year's GNG Game game games of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar will be chosen from games new to me in 2013, not necessarily games that were published in 2013. Think of it more as a selected selection of selections, the cream of the crop of a creamy year of gaming, the choicest cut of many fine meats I've enjoyed playing. This isn't supposed to be an objective evaluation of these games or a means of rating them, it's just a way to recognize and point out to you the viewer some selections that you should ABSOLUTELY GO PLAY RIGHT NOW WITHOUT ANY HESITATION WHATSOEVER. Every game listed below comes with a 100% unmitigated endorsement, and I'll even be so kind as to tell you a little bit about why. 

Since this is more a recommendations ceremony than an awards ceremony, each game is only eligible for a single mention. Anyway, there's nothing more annoying than reading through an awards presentation and seeing "Mass Effect 3 is the best RPG of the year, Mass Effect 3 is the best story of the year, Mass Effect 3 is the best racing game of the year". I get it. You like Mass Effect. Seriously, 75% of the past five years' "of the year" awards around the web have been dedicated in some way to Mass Effect. You could say the series has had a............................................. SHIT EFFECT. Zinged ya!

Genre that is just okay: Best Platformer

Aw I'm just kiddin' ya guys. I love platformers! I guess? They are definitely a genre that is okay to play that reveals a lot of interesting ideas about stage design, something that carries over into just about ANY type of game, but they're primitive and thus my interest tends toward the scholarly rather than the funarly.

#2: Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, Xbox 360, Sega Australia Ltd., 2013

The game does a fantastic job of laying out 2D paths without making them look 2D

I've already gone on quite a bit about how much I love this game, but I do love this game. IT'S FUCKING MAGICAL, OKAY? I don't give a shit about the original or Mickey Mouse, I don't even particularly care for Fantasia. This was just a singularly atmospheric, gorgeous journey. It made me feel like I was actually exploring a land of colorful ghouls and giant globs of gelatin with detail after detail after detail. It sounds cliche, but everything in the game is just so overflowing with personality. It finally occurred to me what it reminds me of - those old I Spy books, with their photographed arrays of toys and trinkets arranged into surreal landscapes. The cotton-ball clouds, the cookie cookies, the playing card towers all pop with a realism that makes you feel as tiny as Mickey appears onscreen. The platforming itself is a litany of playful gimmicks that may not be Donkey Kong Country-precise, but work exceptionally well in further developing that sense of a real space without needing the crutches of hyper-realistic physics or octopus rifts.

#1: Sonic Generations, Xbox 360, Sonic Team, 2011

Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow!

In a blaze of cat, Sonic returns to America for the first time in the 21st century for the best racing action platformer on feet that you never thought you've played before. Sonic Generations is a really satisfying game both to explore and to master, and you'll master it as you explore. It makes the trademark Sonic speed refreshing by varying its application from stage to stage without artificially varying gameplay mechanics - the level design gives clear focus to everything from "supersonic platforming" to "supersonic mazes" to "supersonic murder" without needing transformations or team mechanics or a gigantic lineup of eleven furballs. I don't begrudge the other games their gimmicks (well, some), but there's a certain elegance to Sonic Generations - that you can visit each era of Sonic's history and get a taste of the gameplay that characterized it while still playing as the same character with the same mechanics. Maybe it only works because 20 years of game design has been condensed into a 6 hour campaign, but hey, it works. And it only gets more gratifying as you learn the ins and outs of each level and push yourself to play faster and faster.

Kill 'em til they're dead: Best Shooter

Shooters are a genre that have really changed a whole bunch over the ages. Where once we had Gradius, now we have Fark Rye. Some people pretend those are different genres. For the point of this, it doesn't really matter, does it?

Honorable Mention: Kid Icarus: Uprising, Nintendo 3DS, Project Sora, 2012
Kid Uprising gets a mention for having some terrifically fun rail-shooting action, but I can't give it a wholehearted, unmitigated recommendation because of the weird 3rd-rate action stages that make up the bulk of the game. I'm not the first to say it, but the game just does not control like a third-person game should control - and when I say "should", all I'm suggesting is that I "should" feel in control of my perspective and my movement in relation to that perspective. But the auto-scrolling levels are solid (if easy) and I can't help but fawn over a game that does 3D rail-shooting. It's a genre that's existed for like twenty years and only seen like twenty games! The stereoscopic 3D looks great as well, it really gives the action a more dynamic feeling over games like Sin & Punishment, actively contributing to playability by allowing targets to be easier distinguished, grouped, and prioritized. Area-of-effect and melee attacks just feel more... distinguished when playing in 3D - you can literally better see the space they take up. IIRC (in IRC) whatsisname said they weren't making another one anytime soon, and I'm usually not a guy to demand sequels, but I really wish Sora or Nintendo or someone would take these on-rails levels and make them into a full-length game. I promise it's at least going on my to-do list for next week if no one else gets to it sooner.

#2 Saints Row: The Third, Xbox 360, Volition, 2011

Liking this game doesn't exactly make me feel awesome about myself, as it's buried in perhaps the most moronically obnoxious presentation imaginable, but it's about as fun as a sandbox shooter can get. At first I pined for the full destructibility of Volition's earlier triumph, Red Faction: Guerilla, but as I played more I realized there was a certain satisfaction to be found in adapting havoc to Row's rigid city structure. Combined with the visceral and punishing third-person shooting, the world encourages players to get creative with their tactics. I guess using a pick-up truck as a battering ram to scatter a gang and ducking behind a building to lob grenades while waiting for the helicopter cavalry to show up just never got old for me. I appreciate a game that gives me the satisfaction of "realistic" weapons and physics (like baseball bats and grenade launchers) but throws them into utterly preposterous setups - like riding around in a tank on a helicarrier and shooting down jets. There's a great balance here between something totally over-the-top like Vanquish, which completely removes the player from reality for its absurd shenanigans, and something totally gritty and down to earth like Sleeping Dogs, which doesn't let the player indulge in the violence.

It's hard to express exactly what makes this game good. All the hype I read (before having played it) and even the above just comes across as "yeah, but isn't that every sandbox game? how is that different from GTA?". But every shooting/driving sandbox I've played before Saints Row (certainly every one made by Rockstar) is totally undone by a foundation of shit mechanics. Their hearts are in the right place but their heads are up their asses. Saints Row: The Third would be good even if it was a totally linear mission-oriented game (see Red Faction: Armageddon for essentially that) and that's what makes it work in an open world. You'll just have to take my word for it. Or fuck it, whatever.

#1 Capsized, XBLA, Alientrap, 2011

I was almost disappointed when I first saw the look of Capsized, only because I said "goddamnit, this was my idea for a game world!"

Yup, it's imperfect. Yup, it's raw. Yup, that works just damn fine. Capsized manages to combine the what-the-shit chaotic physics nonsense of a game like Red Faction: Guerilla or Worms with the strategic tension and ammo management of Resident Evil 4 with the atmosphere and methodical hunting of Metroid. How well do all those things mesh? Really weirdly! And that makes for a game that doesn't play quite like any other. It may seem to share gameplay with the brain-dead Bad Bots or be inferior to the carefully-wrought Bleed or lack the laborious architecture of Shadow Complex, but Capsized wields an awesome free-spirited naturalism that emancipates it from the oppressive digital nature that we typically treasure in "precise" games. Beyond the loosely mazey level design, the mechanics are imbued with a large factor of randomness. And that ratchets up the tension and makes the insane array of tools at the player's disposal feel a little more welcome. Capsized is a great game because it's not pure playground, it's not "Grand Theft Auto in spaceballs" - it forces the player to focus the absurdity of the action to an end. Lives and ammo are in short supply for each stage, so this isn't pure fucking around. The player needs to be able to gauge when to deploy method and when to deploy mayhem, and how to try to take control or at least recover once things inevitably get out of hand. That does a pretty good job making them feel like an astronaut lost in an alien jungle overflowing with way too much life.

I'm bored just talking about it: Best RPG

I had a huge resurgence in RPG popularity this past year. What I'm trying to say is that I have not liked RPGs for a long time and in 2013 all of a sudden I played like a thousand and was really lovin' 'em. It all goes back to Retro Game Challenge's Guadia Quest, a game that showed me that with a limited scope, I could actually still love a JRPG. I even took a slight detour into roguelikes and had a good time with Shiren the Wanderer before fully circumnavigating the globe back to that seminal WRPG classic, Ultima VII. But floating (or skyrocketing) to the top of that list we had....

#2 Crimson Shroud, Nintendo 3DS, Level 5, 2012

The game had a really fun script and made just the right amount of winking nods to its D&D origins

A short RPG?! Perish the thought! In fact, 2013 taught me that short RPGs are the way 2-B. I assume nearly every mechanic in Shroud is straight outta Dungeons and Dragons, but as I'm barely familiar with tabletop rules (I have one round to my name) I can only credit it all to the game. Shroud's got a neat terse tale to tell, following the old tradition of short/scary stories that are built entirely around one big reveal. There's no need for bullshit lore and an endless backstory to every character - it's all about moving the pieces forward to that big curtain-pull. That's just plain fun, and the handful of battles along the way are unique and challenging and follow the same mentality of stripping out the chaff. Only do anything once - and that'll make Shroud that much more fun a game to revisit. 

#1 Phantasy Star IV, Sega Genesis, Sega AM7, 1995/1993(JP)
So I have to admit that part of my love affair with Phantasy Star IV simply amounts to being swept off my feet. I wasn't ready to like a 16-bit JRPG. But Phantasy Star succeeded because it was fast and funny and kicked me in my emotional nuts before I was ready, and all the painfully cliche fantasy storytelling tropes were saved until the point where a character could react to an ancient apocalyptic prophecy with "Aw, man!" and I could feel exactly the same words echoing in my brain. The dialogue is dopey and innocent but heartfelt, genuine, and just witty enough to cut down any building fatigue. It helps that the biodome paradise scifi future has a truly unique look that escapes cliches of hyper-techno, post-apocalyptic, or utopian futurism, and that the gigantic battle sprites show off tons of memorable detail. Phantasy Star IV is, simply put, a one-of-a-kind adventure spanning beautifully developed worlds and starring a cast of unforgettable characters. That's all I want out of an epic, and as an epic this game shines.

The anime-style cutscenes add a great deal of personality and drama to the story, far more than is achieved in bland talking-headPGs like those made by Square

The battle system is solidly engaging with a nice large-scale challenge structure oriented around managing HP and TP (health and magic). There is a real satisfaction to surviving a dungeon with genuine risk/reward built into the exploration, thanks to the extremely sparse magic restoratives and revives. Definitely no grinding (early Final Fantasy) or training wheels (later Final Fantasy) here - success is driven by careful management of skills, not statistical advantage. It's not an absurdly hard game per se, but every victory feels earned. You've got to give it up for a game with such a neat way of handling random map battles (not gonna spoil it) that doesn't excise them entirely but somehow makes their triviality exciting. 

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Come back tomorrow to see my top picks released in 2013 as well as my overall TOP 3 GAMES OF THE YEAR!!!!!!!!! Will GTAV make a sweep? Super Mario Bros.? Or will it be the underdog Flappy Bird in the top spot? You'll have to wait and see!

Andrew's 2013 GOTY People's Choice Awards Hosted By Woody Allen and His Cat

What a year. Some of us started our careers, others traveled to distant lands to seek their fortune, and still others found talent and promise where it was least expected. The start of a new year is a time to reflect on the big and small: how much weight did I gain from Christmas/New Year's Eve/general eating habits? What am I doing with my life? How can I prioritize my video game/reading/netflix habits to optimize my entertainment utility?

I don't subscribe to New Year's resolutions, because they've never been effective for me. As someone who spends regular hours in the gym, I'm familiar enough with the new-year-rush, just as I'm familiar with the new-years-scoffing-at-the-new-years-rush. The folks doing the scoffing are *hopefully* people, like me, who at some point made going to the gym a full-fledged habit in their lives, and not just assholes who role in once a month. I go to the gym because it's something that I do. I used to avoid it, then later, looked forward to it. Now it really is just one of the few ways I spend my time; I get a very subdued satisfaction from it. Not a "wooo im being healthy and shit" feel-good moment, but a simpler and less pretentious high. All this to say that I believe there are absolutely positive changes folks can make in the new year, going to the gym more often being a classic example with which I am familiar. But I didn't start going to the gym because it was new year, I started because I didn't like how I looked and didn't like how many other people were stronger than me.

Working out, particularly weight-lifting, has taught me that we really can change things about ourselves given the right circumstances and sheer will power. Maybe not the core things, like being a generally shitty person or a kleptomaniac or something like that, but we can play around the edges. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, we can change our habits simply by making the decision to.

But christ is it hard. And that's why I at least can't make fun of the guy in the gym whose visits' periodicity decreases from 2 January onward. You might as well try, because even though chances are slim that whatever habit you're trying to form will stick, there's still a chance, and you're certainly not losing anything by spending a couple hours on the treadmill giving it a shot, wheezing, and looking like hell. If the start of a new calendar year gives you an excuse to role the dice on quitting smoking, or posting more on the blog, then it's as good a reason as any.

Wait what games did I like this year? Greg L. had one game, I have a few quick hits for you:

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon

Not done this one yet, but it really is the most polished game I've played in quite sometime. Much of the game play is straight out of the original, but the environment is neat and pretty, the mechanics tidy, and the puzzles fall right in that sweet spot (maybe just my sweet spot) of being easy enough not to slow me down but difficult enough that you get that single second of satisfaction from figuring out how to light the cob-webs on fire, or get the crystal out of the frozen refrigerator. LM: DM really demonstrates that yes, Nintendo first party games really are all we can expect me to play on my 3DS.

Mega Man 2

I was telling Yourself I should get some badge for beating this game for the first time, welcoming me into the Classic Gamers Club for the Insecure and the Neck-bearded. Tons of fun, and really distilled for me (see LM:DM above) why a little dollop of difficulty can in fact sometimes make a game better, despite my inclinations. Plus, man is the music good. You really don't hear catchy melodies like some of the best in MM2 in games anymore; we've moved towards music that emphasizes the atmospherics of the game more than shooting for good music in and of itself. And I'm not even a particularly big fan of chip-tunes.

Mighty Switch Force



I really didn't know what to expect from this game going in, but I was pleasantly surprised. Like MM2, it's challenging without being infuriating, taking a simple mechanic to its absolute gameplay limits. With a button press you make blocks around the stage become insubstantial while instantaneously other nega-blocks (get the reference??) become safe for landing. You play a curvacious-toon she-cop hunting curvacious-toon, scantly-clad she-lawbreakers, maneuvering around the stage with timed jumps combined with timed block switches. The game does a good job of making the puzzles a good mix of thinking and....well doing, as often to successfully navigate the player must plan well in advance but also be react quickly to an unaccounted for twist. This game is cheap and absolutely worth the money. Starting the second shortly.
 
Dishonored



Yourself did a very good (he pays me to compliment him on the blog) write-up of this one closer to its release, but I'm not one to play a game near its release and I am one to write about games that have been much-discussed. I didn't get the whole point Yourself was trying to make about killing, in the game, being super-meaningful or whatever hippy bullshit he was trying to pull. What I can say is that it was a super-well done stealth game in an interesting if not cohesive (wait whats the deal with the cult and the powers and how's it tie in with every other damn thing?) world. Most of the missions, which take place episodically, were unique jaunts, and the paths to murder varied. I might actually play this one again, which I think speaks to how successfully they pull off the role playing aspects...I went all stealth the first time, I wouldn't mind experimenting more with the weapons in game.

Final Fantasy VII



Yep this is on this list. I've played a lot of JRPGs in my day, but somehow managed to avoid one of the "greats" for this long. I honestly think if I had played it at age 13, it would no question be my favorite game of all time, despite my desire to disassociate myself with anything as wildly popular as FF7. There's so much to love here and no one needs me to go through it, especially no one reading this blog. But 16 years post-release there was enough about the controls, finding my way through prerendered mazes, and back-tracking to keep it from being one of the most epic and fulfilling gaming experiences of my life. I guess it's no surprise looking at the list above, but it had been a while since FF7 since I finished a game and truly missed it with all said and done. Still though, I'm not spending hours breeding chocobos. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Greg L's 2013 GOTY Award

I just have the one.

When Nintendo released Wind Waker HD, everyone noted that the prospect was sad in one sense or another: one of Wii U's headliners was a remake. The console's first party offerings have been short on creativity. New Super Mario Bros. U continues the line of New Super Mario Bros. games that iterate rather than progress. Super Mario 3D World gives players a cast of characters with competing strengths and weaknesses, but it's a gesture that does little to hide that each stage is predictable and shallow.

(Maybe we can discuss Pikmin 3 and Game & Wario some other time.)

Enter New Super Luigi U. On the surface, it appears to be a shameless rehash, featuring assets already used for New Super Mario Bros. U. Luigi may jump higher, he may be more slippery, and he may only have 100 seconds to clear each stage, but there's no obvious change to the essence of New Super Mario Bros.

In reality, though, these modifications fuel sweeping changes. Because you have but 100 seconds to clear each stage, the stages are shorter. This leads to denser enemy placement. Flying squirrel enemies will land on your weighted platforms, disrupting your footing. Ice-throwing turtles will bump elbows with spiked fuzzballs, turning harmful obstacles into icy platforms. Elements interact more often, creating a more engaging playground. 

In one stage, Ice Bros. freeze your enemies to create platforms. It's definitely one of the better stages, and it showcases how original the Luigi U team got with old assets.

New Super Luigi U emphasizes a sense of chaos. Stages are not just punchier than usual; there's more going on in each individual moment. Normal New Super Mario Bros. stages have a series of challenges, but in New Super Luigi U, those challenges are all lumped over top one another. On top of that, Luigi's floaty jumps and slippery stops lend more weight to your button presses, increasing the sense of chaos.

Perhaps ghost houses speak the most to this change. These stages are all about employing deception to hinder your navigation. Normally, this means plopping a big old maze for the player to slog through; check each door, make a mental note of what you do, and eventually you'll walk out. New Super Luigi U instead restricts its deceptions to the span of one room. Rather than wander around a maze, you'll see a single scenario and figure the best way through it. In one stage, you're on a moving platform suspended over a bottomless pit, and it looks like it's about to hit a wall--there must be some way past, right? Try checking for an invisible passage through the wall. Moments like these make deception tense and exciting rather than long and drawn-out.

Given the time restriction on levels, the developers mixed crafty design with tension for ghost houses.

It's no revolution, but it's an experience unique to the Mario series in the same way that Lost Levels and Super Mario World carve unique spaces from the molds of Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3, respectively. It's an important distinction to make from other games that merely improve--New Super Luigi U deviates.

If Nintendo needs to turn to easy-to-make budget-priced DLC to regain its sense of daring, so be it. On that note, New Super Luigi U also makes me smile because it reflects Nintendo's growing realization that the internet can be your friend.

Games like Pandora's Tower, Chain Blaster, and The Wonderful 101 also made my year, but as an increasingly cynical Mario fan, New Super Luigi U stood above the pack as Game of the Year.