Coint and Plick 2014 - The Seventh Annual ILX Video Game Poll

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/003257673/1540635093_lethal_weapon_im_too_old_for_this_shit_answer_2_xlarge.jpeg

Let's begin with a few general comments, and then proceed to the games that received the lowest possible points and votes ... the five point club.

This was the year when I kinda stopped paying attention to REAL GAMING as everyone and their mother scrambled to shiny new black boxes of varying sizes and shapes that did exactly what their old dusty black boxes of varying sizes and shapes do, only with less software to do it. I have no interest in most console games these days and not enough time to play anything that demands my attention for a weekend, so that's PC out as well. That leaves me with an iPad and the subway and not much else. It's sad. - forksclovetofu

its difficult to communicate emotional truth, and in some ways more difficult to communicate how having emotional truths conveyed to you feels. 2013 was - maybe, kinda, sorta - the year of THE FEELS a shorthand for the complicated mix of nostalgia, longing, understanding and loss that certain types of media invoke in their audience. gone home makes me think about people who say things like THE FEELS, about the way that shorthand can condense and simplify these snarled emotional states, about the duality of signs. - Lamp

My biggest achievement of the year was probably stopping playing pocket planes, and successfully resisting pocket trains. I still play my stupid iphone games. But at least the ones I'm playing now have actual gameplay to go with their time management.

Biggest difference between this and last year -- all these tiny iGames have plenty of retro elements. But they aren't really about the pixel art and the chiptunes. Some have them, but its a secondary design choice to the novel gameplay mechanics each explores. Almost every one of them gives something actually new, or at least in a new combination. The key is that they have short gameplay, a mix of mechanics, a focus on one goal at a time, and then they flesh it out with a wide variety of meta- goals that persist across runs. There's so much creativity out there, and I don't see it drying up anytime soon. - s.clover

My ballot is informed by my lack of a console or a decent video card ... as well as the neglect into which my favorite genre, the Black Isle-style isometric RPG, has fallen. (In the next year or two, I'm holding out hope for the finished versions of Wasteland 2, Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, Underrail, and Age of Decadence.) - one way street

I struggled to even get to 10 this year. - if

video games are p cool. - polyphonic

Honorable Mention: Black Crown Project – Browser – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/5Lmuqie.jpg

Website | Guardian | Verge | Trailer

The Black Crown Project is disgusting. It made me gag, squirm, and walk away from my computer screen at various points, which is impressive for a game that is based almost entirely on text and multiple choice questions. The surreal horror game written by Rob Sherman is unusual in a number of ways, though. Not quite a novel but also not quite a text adventure, The Black Crown Project is a fascinating experiment in storytelling that captures the richness of goth writers like Clive Barker while also letting the reader carve their own path through the game.

Black Crown also experiments with books and video games as businesses. Characters in the game’s fictional Widsith Institute only advance in station—and through the story—as diseases ravage their body over time. Unlike real diseases, you can pay the publisher, Random House, to speed the process along in your playthrough. Even the marketing of the work is playful. For instance, the Amazon.com listing for Lincoln’s Bedsheet, a short story released as a tie-in to Black Crown, drops only vague hints of the larger project. - Anthony John Agnello, Gameological

Oh, okay, this was my vote - for the writing I probably would have given it way more points, but it uses the StoryNexus format in a way that I found far more frustrating than its progenitor Echo Bazaar (or Fallen London, actually, it is now). Elongated waiting times, grinding actions, and storylets blocked off to those who won't or can't pay; all of these things made me give it only the cursory number of points. HOWEVER, I will say that if the description from Gameological appeals to you, at least play through the 'character building' stage - it really is fantastic horror writing.

(Actually, full disclosure: I soured on it when in a hungover state I clicked a paid-for storylet option by mistake, and it took credits I had very slowly gained from playing Fallen London and hoarding for a couple of years. My mistake so I never expected them back, but it pissed me off so much I basically stopped playing.)

oh hey, sent my rant via email poly, sorry i didnt get it in in time, use it if you want.

I tried to play all the games that were free on the noms list, Black Crown Project had a really cool premise + writing but yeah I balked at the idea of being locked out of certain storylines unless I paid. Playing just the beginning was still worth it, though!

Here's jjjusten's rant, minus specifics about games we'll be seeing later. If anyone else has general state-of-gaming blurbs this would probably be a good time for them. You can just post them in the thread at this point.

2013 for me is the year that I finally boiled over with rage about the love affair slobberfest about downloadable and indie games. SO much ink spent on half-assed stuff simply because it was some dude doing his ill-conceived art project that really means something maaaaaaan that i just couldnt take it anymore. This isn't to say this stuff all sucks or anything, i am glad we get things like fez and limbo, but this seemed to be the year that any mawkishly sentimental bore-fest or ugly as sin minimalist crap was going to get gold awards across the board.

...

idk if this whole nightmare is thanks to dorks clinging to games as art, or some attempt by game bloggers to have credibility because they are so deep u know, but this shit has to stop. did we learn nothing from the heaping of praise on Braid, which led to lots of us paying that dumb dick money to discover that "oh wait this game sucks"? if people want to put a bullet in the head of indie games, this circle jerk of racing to laud the lowest common denominator and rewarding the poor or non-existent game design will do it faster than any draconian moves by the console companies. -jjjusten

just spent a couple minutes browsing for the bomb.gif that accurately illustrates that post but i couldn't find one that was exactly right

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B8z4gW2rKBY/SXPtrLiU-NI/AAAAAAAAABQ/gZqc9eKfsLg/s320/thumbs-up.jpg

i want jjj to list off specific examples until everyone has at least one game they can be angry on behalf of

i wanna know what games jjjusten is complaining about in particular, but i guess we'll see as the results unfold

i mean i think there was one great indie artfest game this year, but outside of that i was keen on a whole bunch of indie-ish titles that i don't _think_ fit that bill?

I know one of them because we ranted at each other about it. Such bullshit.

Honorable Mention: Fiz: The Brewery Management Game – iOS/Android – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/bEt1Ypw.gif

Website | Metacritic | Touch Arcade | New School | Trailer

i can confirm that Fiz is a lot of fun! for those of you who enjoyed a kairosoft game or five (game dev story, dungeon village, grand prix story) but wish that they would do something new, this is the game for you. here are a few elements from the game, just to give a feel for it.

once you get going, the game has a nice flow to it. while your team (all of whom you've give names that would make your mother disown you, of course) are making your brew, you're looking at the available markets for a future brew. every market has different preferences. there are dive bars where you can send your cheapass lager, there supermarkets with lots of customer (and lots of competition), and there are fancy places where the customers expect high-end expensive shit. there are also seasonal places where you can reliably unload a ton of brew during certain months. in addition to looking into what the customers like, and their affluence, you can also research your competitors offerings at the same market.

once you've sold beer at a certain market, you have good data to plan your next brew that you'll send there. you can take a look at the history of your sales there, particularly at the quality of the batch that was sold, the price that you sold it at, and how quickly it sold. each batch of beer has an expiration date (usually around 2 months, to start with). you want to set your price at the magic spot where it just barely sells out just before the expiration date. if the price is too high, you won't sell out and some of the beer will expire. if the price is too low, then you'll sell out but your profits won't be as high as they could have been. the magic price point is different every time you make a shipment, because a) the quality of your beer will be different than the last time, and b) the competition may have changed up their offerings at the same market.

there's also all the stuff you'd expect, like being able to upgrade equipment, events (i.e., make at least 85 units of a 700 quality beer by October in order to unlock a new character that you can hire; beer tasting competitions), unlockable recipes, etc etc.

bottom line: kairosoft just got out kairosofted by a mile. - Karl Malone

i quit playing it 2 days later btw

;_;

lol polyphonic, did you animate that one just for me? <3

lol karlz

i don't know if Fiz is still a dollar, but if it is, it's totally worth it imo. you're not going to look back on it in a few years with nostalgic teary eyes, but it is genuinely entertaining for several hours. if i went to the arcade as a kid and was able to play a game for 5-6 hours on 4 quarters, i'd probably be pretty happy!

not hard to guess what game(s) jjj is referring to, but i avidly await their reveal. i should probably try to play one/them before it appears, haha

yeah I dl'd Fiz after hearing about it on here, and played it for a couple of days and then haven't gone back. I don't know why, it was fun, but I dunno...

that's just how i felt about beating 100000000 a few days ago, it's over and done, no regrets. hyped for YOU MUST BUILD A BOAT.

lol polyphonic, did you animate that one just for me? <3

There will be some caveman-level gifs from time to time to mix it up.

Sorry for the general shittiness of the overlays. I really need a Wacom.

Honorable Mention: The Swapper – PC – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/UBQtT3k.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Destructoid | Edge | Trailer

One-by-one, area-after-area, new elements pile on. Various types of light prevent aspects of the Swapper device from functioning, transport beams whip you and/or your clones from place-to-place at spine-compacting speed, gravity gets turned on its head, and crates need pushing. That’s just a light sampling of all the wrenches Swapper tosses into your well-oiled puzzle-solving machine, and it’s quite good at layering them on top of each other. One moment, I was synchronizing clones such that’d they walk opposite directions onto switches, and the next I was doing something similar while upside-down, unable to swap into other bodies, and seconds away from splatting into hair-and-skin-flavored space jelly. - Nathan Grayson, Rock Paper Shotgun, apparent hyphen addict

The Swapper has interesting world-building and truly challenging puzzles, the latter of which have been missing from too many adventure games of late. - one way street

the images look great dude

At this point, if iPhone games keep me entertained for a week's worth of flights, I'm satisfied.

poly, please hit me up if writing for any of the games i nominated is nonexistent. i will justify.

poly, please hit me up if writing for any of the games i nominated is nonexistent. i will justify.

A good rule of thumb is that if you think it doesn't have a blurb it probably doesn't.

2013 for me is the year that I finally boiled over with rage about the love affair slobberfest about downloadable and indie games. SO much ink spent on half-assed stuff simply because it was some dude doing his ill-conceived art project that really means something maaaaaaan that i just couldnt take it anymore. This isn't to say this stuff all sucks or anything, i am glad we get things like fez and limbo, but this seemed to be the year that any mawkishly sentimental bore-fest or ugly as sin minimalist crap was going to get gold awards across the board.

so gutted that you're alread married

mawkishly sentimental bore-fest

surely this is critical darling gone home

ngl I think what jjj is railing against describes my entire ballot. the only new PC game I paid money for this year was Gone Home :P

Swapper looks cool. I got it but haven't been able to play much. The ease to which you can clone and destroy your clones puts some spooky existentialism into it.

i've definitely gotten less interested in narrative as i've gotten older and more interested in rawer/ludic/mechanical elements of a game. there was a time when i was like 12 and could play a jrpg w/ 100 hours of cutscenes + be mollified.

Honorable Mention: Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC – PS3/X360/PC/Mac – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/GQSX9FN.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | Washington Post | Trailer

first things first, the borderlands team is as good at DLC as anybody our there, the only competitor MAYBE being both fallout games. this is no exception, but where it really shines is watching a bunch of behind the scenes dork let their tabletop freak flag fly. great writing, hard as hell, brilliant execution in wrapping the core game in some totally different vibe without breaking anything, and tons of in jokes and easter eggs that fly by so fast you will miss half of them the first time out. basically, if you like the game and you are plenty leveled up, you have no excuse to skip this. bonus points for making a DLC that will fucking pwn you if you just try to roll into it to test the waters, its crazy hard. - jjjusten

Tiny Tina may be the best post-release DLC I've played for anything. - Telephone Thing

It's more fun than the main game imo. - gbx

Wow I own that as part of the season pass and never even got around to installing it because I'd burnt out on the other DLCs before it got released. Will give it a go.

Honorable Mention: People – Browser – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/TtSQe4c.gif

Website | Developer's Blog

Arrow keys or WASD to move. Please make sure you can hear the game since the sound is an important part of it. Also be sure to play through to the end, it's worth it. - BenW, creator

I am like a rolling thundercloud of stormy love! - KevinZuhn, May 4, 2013 @ 1:56pm

love the gif. good game w minimal gameplay, moody aesthetics, doesn't overstay it's welcome; more arty indie games should be like it- short evocative & sweet.

Should I keep going?

Sure! I'm following along by zing. Comments on other honorable mentions: fiz fizzled out quickly for me, borderlands 2 was fun but since I never finished it I didn't bother w the expansions. Haven't tried the other 2 yet- looking forward

with people, i never heard the mission statement and i assumed the game was about saving the little black guys from being snagged up! just played it with the opposite impetus in mind and "beat it"
what does it say about me that i've seen enough limboesque sad guy games that i assumed this one was about protecting your friends from being snapped up rather than helping be a matchmaker

yeah, keep going!

glad someone voted for "people", it was the last thing to fall off my ballot. i also panicked at first when my little guys got siphoned off, it went against my hoarder's instinct.

also, loving the rollout format, polyphonic!

also following this with a mix of enjoyment and shame, having forgotten to vote :(

imgur is being a dick at the moment

Honorable Mention: Year Walk – iOS/PC – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/ZP7FTK5.jpg

Website | Metacritic | 148 Apps | Slide to Play | Trailer

The super old school gameplay wasn't frustrating because it added to the oppressive creepy atmosphere so effectively. - if

Spooky 2D/3D adventure game Year Walk, based on Swedish folklore, came out this week. I'm liking the Contre Jour aesthetics. - Sanpaku

Year walk is frustrating. Memorising sequences and revisiting old areas of the map to see if anything's changed are the dudliest of dud game mechanics. - ledge

i really want to play year walk

Honorable Mention: Resogun – PS4 – 5 pts – 1 vote | Top PS4 Exclusive

http://i.imgur.com/OguE7WL.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Polygon | Gaming Age | Trailer

Resogun's DNA comes from Defender and Robotron: hulking, high-scoring chasing 80s arcade cabinets from Williams that placed skill front and centre as your lone spaceship cut swathes through patterns of flitting bad guys. That is Resogun in a nutshell, retaining that purity of gunning down alien invaders in a scrolling siege. But don't be fooled, the heart of its gameplay may be timeless but there is modern fizz to its makeup.

It is beautiful for a start; sparkly, glitzy laser fire exchanged over the neon wreckage of the last human cities, enemies exploding in a shower of voxels. It is busy but eminently readable, with distinct colours and patterns keeping your eye fixed between your ship and your foe. Resogun is a side scrolling shoot 'em up, but its levels are cylindrical, wrapping around a central point like a carousel. - Tom Hoggins, The Telegraph

I had forgotten how much I enjoy side-scrolly shooters before I started playing this. Super simple, super fun. -DJP

Top PS4 exclusive! Yeah this is why it's more fun keeping this poll insular.

Honorable Mention: Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut – PS3/Vita – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/gDEbNpC.jpg

Website | About the Director's Cut | Metacritic | The Digital Fix | Gaming Age | Trailer

Lone Survivor is Jasper Byrne's psychological survival adventure game that allows players to choose the method of their madness: Shoot everything that goes bump in the dark or sneak around quietly to escape the ravaged city; stay healthy with food or pills; seek out other survivors or go it alone. Jessica Conditt, Joystiq

Lone Survivor hearkens back to the classic Team Silent installments of Silent Hill, and shows how expressive pixel art not strictly tied to evoking nostalgia can be. - one way street

lone survivor was pretty good. i can't remember why i stopped playing it, i think i forgot about it. so maybe not that good...

This is a lot of work here Poly, nice rollout!

just keepin ya seat warm

Honorable Mention: The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 - Faith – PS3/X360/Vita/PC/Mac/iOS – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/shqqGx8.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | Washington Times | Trailer

Classifying this adventure as a game seems almost silly. There are some quick time events and a little bit of investigative action but as a whole you're taken on a choose-your-own-adventure storytelling thrill ride. Highly stylized in its presentation the player is put into the role of the Big Bad Wolf himself. After the exile from their Homelands he tries to clean up his image as Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fabletown. What follows is a well-acted and absolutely gorgeous to watch film-noir style mystery into the seedy underbelly of Fabletown, its denizens and its daily struggle to keep everything together.

Aside from a very select few the exile has not been kind to most of the characters we know and love. Their 'happily ever afters' have long since been forgotten and what's left is dark and gritty characters pushed to the brink of survival. Who would have thought that the hero of Red Riding Hood would be a foul mouthed woman beater who strolls Fabletown for hookers? I know I never would have and The Woodsman is just one example of a great hero's fall from grace that you'll encounter here. This treatment sinks its hooks into you and doesn't let go and is easily one of the best things about the story as a whole.

To be quite frank, as much as I'd like to give some commentary on the opening episode’s plot it really would take away from the enjoyment of watching it unfold for yourself. It's crafted so well that taking even a single piece of the pie and handing it to you on a plate would take away from the impact you'll feel discovering it on your own. - Shawn Petraschuk, Canadian Online Gamers

This game is absolutely amazing! - AnalDoomsday, Nov 6, 2013

iirc walking dead finished much higher in its year. was this not as good?

The first episode is strong, but there's just not that much on the basis of which to judge yet--I say this not having played the second chapter. Thanks again, polyphonic, for your work on this poll!

walking dead was top 10 last year, i believe. i'm interested in this but i'm not familiar enough with the source material to pre-pay for the whole season up front.

Fables isn't done yet, we'll have a better idea once the season is complete. Same w/Walking Dead Season 2.

what a cool thread. I can't wait to try some of these out.

Lol who the hell is AnalDoomsday

Sad I missed the first day of this on account of being dead w/ a cold, but psyched to follow it today!

general complaint: is GOTY edition supposed to mean something? Game of the year according to who? seems like every mediocre major release has one of these now where they charge an extra $30 to make the case black plastic!

def. prefer the more generic "Ultimate"/"Gold"/"Complete" subtitles for monetizing DLC on disc

A Game of the Year Edition is any video game that has been repackaged and advertised as having earned either one or many Game of the Year awards from any number of recognized publications or websites, often times with a discounted price and additional content.

So anything from here I guess. But anything that fails to get a GOTY seems to just use "legendary edition" or something anyway.

Honorable Mention: League of Legends – PC/Mac beta – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/Wm2Jjx7.jpg

Website | Metacritic | World's Final 2013 | Trailer

League of Legends - do we do this? We should do this.

The most-played PC game in the world isn't the Sims or SimCity or even World of Warcraft. It's League of Legends, and it's a lot of fun.

Part of this game's success is that players can compete in tournaments against other players from around the world. At the 2013 championships, the top two teams gathered in front of thousands at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. A team from Korea, called SK Telecom T1, took home the $1 million prize. - Business Insider

did anybody see the League of Legends piece on HBO real sports? They threw out the stat that "1 in 20 people play LoL" which sounds utterly false. - forks

The free 2 play esport. What's fun about it? Short learning curve, relatively level playing field. Your character evolves in a matter of minutes while playing so it satisfies that rpg itch. This was my WoW pvp substitute for awhile. The community is like any other online game, totally fucking horrible. - bnw

i played through the Fables one with my gf and the visuals and atmosphere are perfect, but your decisions just don't seem to matter (we tried it twice with opposite choices). maybe they will down the road, but it feels more like a semi-interactive story than a game.

bahaha that graphic is awesome

yeah it really captures LoL's deviantart character design style

the LOL community kind of puts to rest any superiority complex pc folk might have over console kiddies imo. i mostly stopped playing when i realized i enjoyed the bot games more then pvp because you avoided most the sewage spew. aside from that I think Riot does a great job presenting and updating their game.

it's ALL garbage

a few times when someone tried to tell me that PC gamers were more civilized than console gamers, I copied a couple of sections of WoW general chat from my play session that evening and gave them to the person as a rebuttal

basically humans are terrible, this is what i have learned from gaming

I learned that humans are terrible from living through childhood and adolescence ;_;

children are terrible, let's just admit it

^ and childhood lasts abt 25-45 yrs

if you're lucky

Honorable Mention: Ultra Business Tycoon III – Browser – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/5m3kP2s.jpg

Game | Indiestatik | Indie Games | Rock Paper Shotgun | Hairpin

I'm hesitant to vote for a Porpentine game, given my lack of enthusiasm for most Twine games and given Porpentine's reputation for abusive behavior toward other queer women, but Ultra Business Tycoon III is hilarious and surprisingly moving.

...

It starts off as a whimsical parody of mid-90s "edutainment" games, and winds up somewhere more emotionally urgent. - one way street

In case anyone tries to play this, you'll eventually need the serial number (3497282) in the mock-readme.txt here to finish the game: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/nfo.png

Porpentine's reputation for abusive behavior toward other queer women

I didn't know about this. Sucks if so, because if nothing else she has been an instigator for a lot of people to find a voice through DIY gaming. Mostly appallingly shitty twine games I'd rather shoot myself than play, but that kind of doesn't matter - I don't need to want to play them for them to be useful to a community. Porpentine games themselves are very varied in quality, which I guess goes with the personal-gonzo style. This one I remember as being okay?

Yeah, I think this is one of her stronger works, although the narrative of the player character in the 1990s takes time to unfold. Their Angelical Understanding from 2013 (http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/angels/angel.html#48is also worth playing through. I won't get into the grievances people have had with Porpentine here, but I don't have a good reason to disbelieve anyone who's felt emotionally mistreated. Still, the twine community carries on, whether or not I find many of their games compelling.

sounds interesting, will give it a shot soon

Honorable Mention: Quadropus Rampage – iOS/Android – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/BITZlLa.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Touch Arcade | Droid Horizon | Trailer

I love a good Roguelike. More than that, I enjoy a good game that makes excellent use of Roguelike design elements. Enter Quadropus Rampage: an "Endless Roguelike Brawler" starring an incredibly angry four-legged octopus and his almost equally miffed starfish companion. It's a weird concept, certainly, however Butterscotch Shenanigans knows exactly what they're doing. - Rob Rich, 148 Apps

Man, folks slept on this. Action RPG meets iphone sized gameplay length. Loot, rampage, descend, die, rinse repeat. - s.clover

ok black crown (the first game listed) is def the best writing ive ever seen in storynexus, holy crap. super creepy

thing i am gonna check out this Quadropus Rampage

looking forward to more recommendations from AnalDoomsday

man if i had a dollar for every time youve said that

Honorable Mention: flower – PS4/Vita – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/bBnTrOJ.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Gamespot | Eurogamer | Trailer

FLOWER | Concluding The Third Annual Coint and Plick Poll: ILG’s Best Video Games of 2009 - Part Four: #1 through #20

typical hipster comment "this must be amazing to X while you're high". you can tell something is overrated pseudo intellectual tripe when junkies come on a video and bore you with some anecdote about how they shoot heroin to this or whatever. if anything it shows how unengaging gameplay wise this "game" must be if its possible to "play" it will taking illegal substances. this game has no story, you play as a petal ffs, yet "oh no its too deep for you, its minimalist art you uncultured barbarian" - Gabriel Voidx, 8 months ago

This captivated a room of thirtysomethings on New Year's Eve at a friend's house. - Jordan

(AnalDoomsday is not an ilxor fwiw, just some person in a comments section.)

sure he isnt

AnalDoomsday is every person in a comments section IMO

We are all AnalDoomsday.

*breathes sigh of relief about not going with AaanalDddoomsday as commenter name at the last minute*

AnalDoomsday is a feeling

actually if you could just work AnalDoomsday into every pullquote credit from here on out that would probably be for the best

Hungry4AnalDoomsday

really great use of the touch controls and overall a very solidly designed game - forkscloveanaldoomsday

my mom and sister LOVED this game despite both being non-gamers. they went so far as to get 100% (or whatever equivalent this game has) on every level except the one that I had done and forced me to 100% that level like 6 months later

lol it wasn't until I clicked on the picture that I realized I've been confusing flower with grOw

not the best storynexus i have played, but far from the worst - emil.doomsday

yep. slow day at work.

also I get what dude is going for but man do I want to punch the second paragraph of the Gamespot review in the neck

In Flower, you ride the wind. You enter the first level to see a single hovering flower petal; you press a button to surge forward and carry the petal with you, and tilt the controller to steer, as if you're the pilot of a blissful breeze. As you rush through the grass and natural growth, you pass through clusters of flowers, each bud blooming and adding a petal to the ever-growing bouquet that sails through the air. Each time you glide through a batch of flowers, petals emit notes that complement the bucolic soundtrack. In this way, you aren't just a player but a musical collaborator, composing your own countermelody as you rush ahead. Flowers are arranged in rows, circles, and other patterns, and following those patterns enhances the musical effect by allowing each tone to flow into the next.

SHUT UP

Whoever wrote nauseating paragraph is a total f'king anal doomsday suppository.

someday AnalDoomsday is going to google his screen name and then there will be a reckoning. or maybe a homecoming.

*almost googles "AnalDoomsday" at work before catching himself*

oh, analdoomsdaypaws

Honorable Mention: Poker Night 2 – PS3/X360/PC/Mac/iOS – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/WDYAqN5.gif

Website | Metacritic | Gamespot | Mac Life | Trailer

this maybe could have been my game of the year except for the minor sticking point that the game is HORRENDOUSLY BROKEN. hangs and crashes and all of that. in a poker game. and oddly because it appears that the people who made it could code animations and tons of threaded dialog and branched storyline shit but could not actually code - jjjusten

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha OTM

the creepy lag spikes followed by the rush of the animation trying to synch back up to the audio track is incredibly unsettling, much more unsettling than a poker game should be

so fucking otm as soon as i saw that pop up i thought "who would vote for something w/ that many hangs/full on crashes/etc"? shit was fully unplayable on ps3, dunno abt other platforms but jesus christ what a mess.

I actually only ever had it freeze on me once

well I mean freeze and then didn't recover

hahaha the great thing is that gif is actually a lot like trying to play the game

it's funny how well the story bits are incorporated into the horribly broken framework

freezes never recover (hang = like a freeze but eventually "recovers")
freezes are infinite~~
crashes are console killers (or on pc/mobile usually just the app dies)

GLAD 2 HELP ILX BUGTRACKING NOMENCLATURE TODAY

I've never seen an actual crash, that would be fun as long as there wasn't any destructive buffer overrun involved

i am pretty sure that poker night 2 is the only time i have ever seen an actual ps3 retail kit running a released game crash, although i have seen a few x360 retail kits do it (not for years tho, unless you count hardware failures which i do not)

usually at the very least you can get into guide/XMB and terminate but this game made even that imposs!!! i was impressed. should not have been allowed to come out as per sony standards.

ultra business tycoon III: i feel like i would've really reveled in porpentine's game style seven or eight years ago, around the same time i felt like i "got" tao lin. right now i feel fatigued by all the vivid, unmoored language; it doesn't give me a thrill like i think it's meant to, i don't "get it" anymore, i can no longer access that headspace.

poker night 2: i had this on my steam wishlist, figuring 5 bucks might be worth some sam & max jokes, but maybe i'll just watch a let's play instead.

Honorable Mention: NES Remix – WiiU – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/1HfuUrq.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Nintendojo | Escapist | Trailer

Like Retro Game Challenge but with actual retro games. How little they tend to directly touch these games means that when they do the surreality of it is enhanced further (the bits where the view just keeps zooming out and Link climbing Donkey Kong girders are highlights so far) - if

Honorable Mention: Type:Rider – iOS/Android/PC – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/oktLLJg.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Slide to Play | Gamezebo | Trailer

We live in a world of type. We tattoo our cities in it from top to bottom. It clothes us, and sometimes armors us. Yet despite the fact that it permeates every aspect of our lives, few of us really feel that they understand typography. A new game, Type:Rider, aims to change all of that by turning some of the world's most influential fonts into a multiverse of video game worlds. - John Brownlee, Fast Company

The most beautiful game I played all year. The Kandinsky painting come to life was astonishing. The gameplay itself is a bit weak, and the crashes are irritating. Still, a reminder that there are possibilities we have barely explored. - s.clover

Honorable Mention: Guacamelee! (including Gold Edition) – PS3/PS4/Vita/Xbone/PC – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/NrhJvOa.gif

Website | Metacritic | Pocket Gamer | x |
Trailer

You begin Guacamelee as a poor Mexican farmer named Juan, whose boring life is interrupted when the woman he loves is kidnapped by a murderous skeleton named Carlos Calaca. Juan is killed in a botched rescue attempt but finds himself resurrected as a luchador in the realm of the dead. Journeying through the forests, deserts and temples of the surrounding countryside, Juan builds up an arsenal of mystical wrestling powers to take on the dastardly Calaca.

Guacamelee smartly "gates" new areas behind obstacles that only new skills and abilities can overcome, and those new tricks are also added to Juan’s growing combat and platforming repertoire. The headbutt skill destroys yellow blocks but also can be used to send enemies ping-ponging across the screen. The uppercut destroys red blocks and allows you to extend your jump just enough to access some initially out-of-reach ledges. Every upgrade grants the immediate satisfaction of new areas to explore and the extended goal of mastering a new move. - Philip Kollar, Polygon

It figures I would miss some tag shit in my last one of the day, haha.

see ya tomorrah

Guacamelee is awesome for its design and humor, but some of the platforming hits a level of difficulty that just pissed me off and had me quit.

ok so the kandinsky level isn't the only amazing level in type:rider. all the modern levels are pretty great -- the bahaus one equally so, and the newspress / nytimes one only slighly less so. if you can get this cheap or on a free promo, its def worth it, and if you're at _all_ a typography geek this is the only game made to target your demo and your demo alone. i mean shame the gameplay isn't fantastic, but the design is astonishing.

also if you ever think you might be in a "are videogames like art maaaan" discussion this is good to have in yr back pocket.

but if you want a great platformer, i mean, probably a mario knock-off will be more rewarding.

Haven't played it yet, but still expected a better showing for Guacamelee.

seems kinda underlooked, given the positive reaction i've seen

Honorable Mention: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies – 3DS – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/abyj0aD.jpg

Website | Metacritic | EGM | Polygon | Trailer

Probably only playing to fans at this point (hence the online-only release?) but this was the best entry in a long time. Gameplay-wise just much better executed recently, and the strands of plot were tied together in a way that was much more fun and in the last case more emotional. A couple of dodgy gender-related missteps and the ridiculous final reveal were the only downsides. Looking forward to finally getting to play AA vs Professor Layton. - if

I wish they'd port all of the PW games to iPod Touch, or online, or something. I've only played the first but I love it so much and could easily become some kind of gibbering fangirl.

damn, i really need to pick that up now that I finally have a 3DS

Guacamelee is fun as hell but the Reddit humor in it (iirc there are, like, lolcats and derp jokes?) is really dire

Honorable Mention: Doki-Doki Universe – PS3/PS4 – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/pUSPFxr.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Polygon | Guardian | Trailer

Doki-Doki Universe is a game about empathy, and that's weird.

In many of the games I played this year, you often solve problems by shooting people in the face. That, I can handle. In Doki-Doki Universe, your antagonists aren't clearly defined, and your progress is measured by your ability to seek out societal problems and solve them indirectly through non-violent means.

Doki-Doki Universe's gameplay lands somewhere in between Animal Crossing and a Myers-Briggs personality test. It's like nothing else I've ever played, and it's pretty awesome...in a totally weird sort of way. - Danny Cowan, Joystiq

I REALLY ENJOYED WHAT I PLAYED OF DOKI DOKI UNIVERSE

oh and also hi dere my caps lock was apparently on haha sorry

Doki Doki is fun and its REALLY apparent that it was created by the guy behind Toe Jam & Earl.

Honorable Mention: Rymdkapsel – iOS/Android/Vita – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/Xp8IEAz.jpg

| | | |

anyone play rymskapsel or whatever its called?

great game but sort of frustrating how quickly it ends. like they set up this super system and then it feels like they just gave you a demo of how to play it. couldnt they have made new maps, new challenges, etc etc etc? it really feels like you're just getting started when the game ends.

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 12:18 PM (1 month ago)

yep - i was really into it...for that day. :( i assumed that the three challenges that were displayed at the beginning of the game were the first three, not the ONLY three!

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 16, 2013 12:30 PM (1 month ago)

totally. it's like inventing the entire mario universe, the physics, the graphics assets, etc and only making one level.

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 12:40 PM (1 month ago)

i guess the intent is that replay value comes from trying to beat your high score and progress to the higher levels. that often works for me as a motivation, but usually only with games with relatively short playthroughs.

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 16, 2013 12:46 PM (1 month ago)

the game doesnt really seem to encourage that tho

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 12:55 PM (1 month ago)

and there are no higher levels!

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 12:55 PM (1 month ago)

there aren't? i got up to wave 33 (one of the three goals is to reach wave 28), the last time i played, and i just assumed that the waves would keep coming, faster and faster, until you died

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 16, 2013 12:57 PM (1 month ago)

oh ya. but those are just waves. the layout and everything is always the same.

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 1:03 PM (1 month ago)

feel like it would be cool if there were different monolith powers and they more randomized. or different levels with less resources, or resources in a more difficult to get to place, etc

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 1:04 PM (1 month ago)

so much potential and like i said it basically feels like just a tutorial.

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 1:04 PM (1 month ago)

yep, definitely. although maybe that's because they wanted to disappoint us so that when rymdkapsel TWO comes out in mid-2014 with new levels and monolith powers for only $3.99 we'll jump on it!

― Karl Malone, Monday, December 16, 2013 1:11 PM (1 month ago)

so much potential and like i said it basically feels like just a tutorial.

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, December 16, 2013 4:04 PM (Yesterday)

hah i came here to make this exact complaint

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:31 AM (1 month ago)

was all im not going to load and search the entire thread theyre just gonna have to deal

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:31 AM (1 month ago)

anyway what other games are kinda minimal simcities

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:33 AM (1 month ago)

they cld at least let you build forever but the waves come too fast

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:34 AM (1 month ago)

you know what else would have been groundbreaking? more than one kind of enemy.

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:54 AM (1 month ago)

(the creator of rymdkapsel is reading this thread right now with a single lonely tear streaming down the cheek)

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:55 AM (1 month ago)

they cld at least let you build forever but the waves come too fast

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:34 PM (7 hours ago)

Totally - entropy sets in quickly

― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, December 17, 2013 4:59 PM (1 month ago)

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | Arcade Sushi | Website

That's it for the also-rans. I'll start with the list proper on Monday.

Hopefully this isn't going too slowly for y'all

naw

good stuff had 5 points for Rymdkapsel on my (unsent) ballot

only honorable mentions and this list already outshines every other video game end of year poll

oh just wait we havent gotten to any of the stuff i voted for yet

yeah no worries on the pace -- just more for me to look forward to!

yup yup

fuck that, people told me to speed up for six years
SPEED UP OR I'LL KIDNAP YOUR CHILDREN

Monday Monday mondsy

#95: SteamWorld Dig – 3DS/PC – 6 pts

http://i.imgur.com/uVWXOB6.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | Rock Paper Shotgun | Trailer

It's Mr. Driller meets Metroid, another marvelous mix of words. You'll burrow your way down miles of earth, leaving a labyrinth of mazes behind you while collecting weapons/upgrades that let you progress further and make your mining life easier. Dig is as addictive as Namco's cute platformer (I went through it in one sitting over the course of six hours), but with the depth (both in systems and Mr. Driller's literal depth) and sense of isolation of Metroid. - Tiny Cartridge

Almost everything about this game was incredibly satisfying: the progression of difficulty, the pacing of the upgrade system, the controls, the lovely graphics. The one unsatisfying thing: this game is short so the fun ends after 5 to 6 hours. - salsa shark

i've heard good things about this one, plan to get it on 3DS at some point

yeah, "too short" is pretty much the ultimate "minus" for me -- like the video game equivalent of "i guess my greatest weakness is that i care... TOO much?"

short is usually a good thing for me, these days. recently i got back into borderlands 2 (playing it co-op this time with a friend who lives down the street), and we're about 15 hours in, and it sucks knowing we're nowhere close to finishing it! if the whole campaign was 15 hours long i'd be happier.

i used to be annoyed about short lengths also, but since i'm getting older and never buy anything new/full price anyway, i'm getting more and more in favor of short, punchy games

yes - also interested in it, also waiting for it to show up in a humble bundle

heh, good call

lol at 6 point trickery, i suggest a interval of 5 rule for the future to make this less complicated

hey hey, don't kill that ILX charm

#94: Knights of Pen and Paper + 1 Edition – iOS/Android/PC – 8 pts

http://i.imgur.com/XUQaMoW.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Rock Paper Shotgun | Edge | Tips & Cheats | Trailer

Pen & paper is really fun, if a bit short. i blew through the main storyline (although they're supposed to be releasing new ones) and now its all postgame grind.

That said, this is like an early FF style rpg. lots of classes, characters, different team builds with each class really different and skills for tanking, etc. So probably a lot of replay there if you're into playing with that stuff. - s.clover

Knights of Pen and Paper is funny, charming. Definitely worth it if you like throwback RPGs like Breath of Death, and Guadia Quest, but the gameplay has got some nice little hooks. - Nhex

how would we distribute 100 pts with a real sense of scale without small intervals?

Like what's the recommended "default" way to split up the points in a decreasing way?

I did 20, 13,12..7, 5 5.

When we get to the ten pointers I think you'll see a good counterargument for only using intervals of five.

fine fine

#93: Time Surfer – iOS/Android – 9 pts

http://i.imgur.com/qcDoRKG.gif

Website | Metacritic | Pocket Gamer | Droid Life | Original Soundtrack | Trailer

Have you played Tiny Wings? If so, Time Surfer will feel very familiar, but in a good way. Like its inspiration, Time Surfer has you control a character by making him dive into a landscape of rolling hills. Dive onto a downward slope, and your surfer gains momentum, soaring higher and farther to a better score. Mess up, and you slow down, which leads to your inevitable death. Time Surfer does just about everything Tiny Wings does, but it adds a great new idea to the equation: time control. - Chris Reed, Slide to Play

Tiny Wings but not peaceful. Except for the peaceful mode. And not hellish. Except for the hell mode. The big win isn't more modes though, or even more... things. The win is more missions. You grind tiny birds until you can master even the trickiest mission, because you can't skip, and you can't move any way but forward. Except I can't beat some missions, and so I got stuck. With Time Surfer there's the same mechanic, but always something new to try. - s.clover

nice gif!

poly are you gif building?

I cut that out of the trailer and added the overlay. Nothing too fancy.

these last few games are a total world of mystery to me

this is what happens when the only mobile games you play are 5 iron solitaire or whatever and that goddamn simpsons game

knights of pen and paper is loads of fun for a few hours but it eventually proves not to have much of an endgame. it's more like a mechanic demo. totally worth a few bucks though

#67 (tie): Solforge – iOS/PC – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/yoxORlM.jpg

Website | Steam | Steam First | Multani Gamer | Trailer

The core game of SolForge pits two 30-card decks against one another in a race to do 100 damage to the opponent. The player that goes first draws five cards off the top of their deck, then plays one card before discarding the rest. The next player draws five cards, then plays two before discarding. From this point on each player's turn consists of a draw of five cards, the playing of two, and a discarding of the remainder. Every four hands, players shuffle their discard pile back into their deck and continue the cycle of draw, play, discard until one player's life total falls to zero.

Cards are split into three varieties: creature, structure, and spell. Creature cards permanently summon a creature to one of five lanes on the battlefield and are the primary form of attack. Structures behave similarly to creature cards, with their function generally being to bolster the player's creature or hinder the opponent's creature occupying the same lane. Spell cards are one-off effects that may impact one or more cards on the battlefield.

The five-lane structure of SolForge makes creature positioning just as important as deck composition and card selection. Each turn, once they are able, creatures will attack the creature opposite them in the lane or the other player directly if the lane is clear. Unlike most Trading Card Games (TCG's) and DCG's, creatures attack on both the player's turn and the opponent's turn, making dramatic swings in momentum a significant probability. - Giant Bomb

Really into Solforge - Gravel

that time surfer gif is hypnotic

67, holy shit

oh ha i begin to see your point

how did we go from #93 to #67?

a lot of ties

I was thinking there can't be 23 in a dead heat? Surely not.

26 even

There always is.

i suspect defaulting to a ranked ballot instead of 10 pts 10 ways would probably help with this phenom.

#67 (tie): TownCraft – iOS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/Gb5kDfp.jpg

| | | |

In an isometric medieval world, your chosen avatar starts with nothing. Taught to harvest sticks and stones from the nearby area, you are shown how to use rudimentary tools in order to obtain more useful resources, which can then be made into more useful objects- and the cycle continues as your crafting projects become bigger and bigger. - Lee Garbutt, God is a Geek

make tools! mine resources! build things! but no creepers, no violence. - Euler

Website | Metacritic | Thunderbolt | Cult of Mac | Trailer

#67 (tie): Hotline Miami – PS3/Vita/Mac/Linux – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/sy7YvKg.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Darkstation | Game Planet | Soundtrack | Trailer

Coint and Plick 2013 - The Sixth Annual ILX Video Game Poll

oh man, hotline miami is awesome. - Mordy

Ok now that I got it for free, and have spent 30 minutes on it, someone please explain to me why hotline Miami isn't completely unfun and horrible garbage. - jjjusten

sticking with that blurb 1000%

I can understand not liking the graphics but I love how that game plays. It's very tense and fun imo.

yeah, very classic arcade'y gameplay. i loved stringing together big combos.

best to think of it amazing twitch kill-puzzle plan-your-movement game, not a reflex game

idk man, got to first real level, played it, died 15 times over (which i largely blame on the implementation of gamepad + idk me sucking at it) deleted it from the hard drive.

everyone sucks at it at first! also, i have to wonder how that game is remotely playable w/controller - you need the mouse precision aiming. you might be better off trying it on PC/Mac

i played it through on vita and i found that the dual sticks worked ok, liked it as a bite-sized handheld game

i've developed so much more patience for "difficult" games as-of-late. i don't think hotline miami would've appealed to me even 5-6 years ago but it was crunchy + actually felt really responsive + slick to me. i played probably 70% of it w/ keyboard + trackpad and maybe 30% was hard enough that i needed the extra agility that the mouse provided.

speaking to the aesthetics - the extreme violence kinda wasn't my bag (i always felt vaguely uncomfortable playing it) but the washed-out lsd neon 80s look appealed to me

What kind of game would you guys like next

maverick bird

How is Hotline Miami so far down the list!? I should have voted, that game was easily in my top 5! You're supposed to die a million times, it's like Super Meat Boy in that respect. I loved the music, too.

Yeah that was my vote so I should defend it. Hated the PC controls actually, had the exact same experience as jjj originally and didn't play any further until the Vita version came along. Loved it on there though, because yep, most of the twitchy stuff can be avoided with planning anyway. And it's a game that expects you to fail lots, but the restarts are super fast so that doesn't stop it being fun.

What I liked most though was the 8-bit look and feel. Like, there were loads of ZX Spectrum games which in my memory were just like this (even though in reality they were turgid and clunky where this is fast and smooth). So most of my vote is just for well-nailed nostalgia.

xp bc only non-pc players could vote for it this year. it placed higher last year.

huh, i thought i was the only vote for it

Jim has the only vote for it in my inbox.

i guess it just missed my ballot. or maybe i figured since it placed last year it already got kudos... anyway great game

I voted for HM last year. I think I might have been the sole vote, at which point I chastized you all for not playing it

the nostalgia/80s angle is a factor - one thing I love is that no actual games could have looked/sounded/played like this back then, it uses modern tech with the "old" aesthetic to do something unique

i think i also voted for it last year, i don't like voting for games 2y in a row :/

Ah, I see. I didn't realize the PC version came out last year. I played it on PC.

#67 (tie): Impossible Road – iOS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/QnFl4gn.jpg

Metacritic | Touch Arcade | Eurogamer | 242 Points | Trailer

An endless roller. How many gates can you roll through?! - polyphonic

that reminds me that i played a bunch of giant boulder of death this year then got bored real quick. totally forgot about it by the time c+p rolled (ahem) around.

MOAR MOAR MOAR MOAR

mini-wrap up:

Honorable Mentions:
Black Crown Project – Browser – http://blackcrownproject.com/
Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC – PS3/X360/PC/Mac – http://www.borderlands2.com/dragonkeep
Doki-Doki Universe – PS3/PS4 – http://us.playstation.com/ps4/games/doki-doki-universe-ps4.html
Fiz: The Brewery Management Game – iOS/Android – http://brewfiz.com/
flower – PS4/Vita – http://us.playstation.com/ps4/games/flower-ps4.html
Guacamelee! (including Gold Edition) – PS3/PS4/Vita/Xbone/PC – http://guacamelee.com/
League of Legends – PC/Mac beta – http://na.leagueoflegends.com/
Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut – PS3/Vita – http://www.lonesurvivor.co.uk/
NES Remix – WiiU – 5 pts – http://nesremix.nintendo.com/
People – Browser – http://www.dangerouspixel.com/people.html
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies – 3DS – http://www.ace-attorney.com/
Poker Night 2 – PS3/X360/PC/Mac/iOS – http://www.telltalegames.com/pokernight2
Quadropus Rampage – iOS/Android – http://www.butterscotch-shenanigans.com/p/quadropus-rampage.html
Resogun – PS4 – http://us.playstation.com/ps4/games/resogun-ps4.html
Rymdkapsel – iOS/Android/Vita – http://rymdkapsel.com/
The Swapper – PC – http://facepalmgames.com/the-swapper
The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 - Faith – PS3/X360/Vita/PC/Mac/iOS – http://www.telltalegames.com/thewolfamongus/episodes/1
Type:Rider – iOS/Android/PC – http://www.bulkypix.com/game/typerider
Ultra Business Tycoon III – Browser – http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/crime.html
Year Walk – iOS/PC – http://simogo.com/games/yearwalk

#95: SteamWorld Dig – 3DS/PC - http://steamworldgames.com/
#94: Knights of Pen and Paper + 1 Edition – iOS/Android/PC – http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/knights-of-pen-and-paper-1-edition
#93: Time Surfer – iOS/Android – http://www.timesurfergame.com/
#67 (tie): Solforge – iOS/PC – http://solforgegame.com/
#67 (tie): TownCraft – iOS – http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/www.towncraftgame.com
#67 (tie): Hotline Miami – PS3/Vita/Mac/Linux – http://hotlinemiami.com/
#67 (tie): Impossible Road – iOS – http://toucharcade.com/2013/07/02/impossible-road-review

#67 (tie): Fez – PC/Mac/Linux – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/TWfP4tO.gif

Website | Metacritic | Action Trip | Hooked Gamers | Fish Quits | Trailer

fez

Coint and Plick 2013 - The Sixth Annual ILX Video Game Poll

I love this game so much! - Some people

I hate this game so much! - Others

lol, very honest quotes there

hahahaha

#67 (tie): Agricola – iOS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/FayniOd.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Arcade Sushi | Touch Arcade | Trailer

anyone interested in board games would do well to check out Agricola. It's $6.99 and well worth it. I've played the real life version a few times and they did a very good job with the conversion to iOS. it's probably best on a iPad but i just have an iPhone and it still works well.

for those who haven't played Agricola irl, it's a european-style board game (decent learning curve, strategic resource gathering decisions, you're looking for the most victory points at the end, etc) that has been near the top of boardgamegeek's list of greatest games for years now. it's a lot of fun! - Karl Malone

looks very cool

i am some people, but i played it last year so i didnt vote for it this time around wrt fez

i played fez for the first time this year but i got bored pretty quickly and did not vote for it

sheesh, whoever is playing the irl version in that screenshot is WAILING

I bought Agricola on the strength of that quote but haven't played it yet but dammit I will one of these days

i will pimp for sticking with fez for a while mordy, its much much more than the initial feel once you start digging. never finished it because distracted by shiny new ps3 but loved everything about it

I beat Fez (although not the postgame crypogram stuff). It didn't take that long and was pretty satisfying. On the other hand, the navigation system in the game is really poorly designed so I can understand why people get annoyed and quit. Especially since the game is all navigation/discovery rather than fast twitch interaction.

yeah, just not 'gamey' enough for me i guess. i got up to a point where i could go to a whole bunch of different islands but i couldn't really figure out what to do in them or where was the best place to go next and i fell into myst malaise. but since i'm no longer buying video games for a while maybe i'll go back to it.

the navigation system in the game is really poorly designed so I can understand why people get annoyed and quit. Especially since the game is all navigation/discovery rather than fast twitch interaction.

i got up to a point where i could go to a whole bunch of different islands but i couldn't really figure out what to do in them or where was the best place to go next and i fell into myst malaise.

^yep, this was my experience

when i was a kid i would have methodically explored every last cranny, then made a giant homemade map on notebook paper and designed the fastest way to get all the pieces, etc. but in 2013 i just turned off the system and did a logroll out of the room, forgot about it forever

and i want everyone to know that i did the logroll out of the room through a normal sized door - visualize THAT

anyone else remember trying to map the underground maze puzzle in the original Zork where you have to drop leaves to track rooms and there was no logic to where different directions led?

Is _Hotline Miami_ based on an oldish (90s, I guess) game?
It looks really familiar, but I have no idea what the game it reminds me of is. Definitely top-down view and ultraviolent. With pretty smooth animations, as I recall it. Not sure if Amiga or PC. Probably PC.

Will be fun to follow this thread, since though I was a big gamer in the 90s, I know virtually nothing of the games of the past decade, barring general cultural osmosis (vague idea what Minecraft and WoW are like; have tried GTA Vice City, Half-Life 2 and Angry Birds)
My main gaming enthusiasm was adventure games ala Monkey Island. I've been told those have made something of a comeback, so I'll be interested to see what may pop up. A co-worker suggested _Machinarium_, but that didn't look particularly appealing.

I really like the way you're presenting everything, polyphonic, and really appreciate all the links.

i assume kentucky route zero will show up (re adventure game revival), and the fables game already placed in honorable mention. last year's walking dead was hugely popular (i loved it) and it had a standalone game come out this year as well as the beginning of season 2. if you're into that kind of stuff, telltale is doing a lot of it.

hahaha be careful which walking dead game you get, there was also a universally hated shooter that came out last year based on the show

I thought Fez was even older than last year....

My main gaming enthusiasm was adventure games ala Monkey Island. I've been told those have made something of a comeback, so I'll be interested to see what may pop up. A co-worker suggested _Machinarium_, but that didn't look particularly appealing.

There are some of these, and I should have at least a couple of recommendations, but I am very tired and my brain has gone blank. Though I did play the demo of Machinarium and really liked it, so maybe you wouldn't go for any of the things I'm into either?

oh yeah, i haven't played it yet, but Broken Age came out this year too. don't know how likely it is to place (esp since as i understand it it's not actually complete)

(broken age was made by tim schafer who co-designed monkey island)

the new wave of point and click games have refined the process so you don't have to point or click, just stare at hours of cut scenes

gamefaqs ruined adventure games for me. i have no patience for solving things on my own when spoilers are a click away.

Ah, yes, Tim Schafer is a name I still recognize (him and Ron Gilbert, and uhh, who was it at Sierra again? Jane Jensen!) should certainly look into that.
Ha, I remember being initially disappointed when games stopped with the interpreter interface. I, ahem, picked up a lot of English from playing Police Quest etc. I got over that quickly enough. Hell, I loved Grim Fandango.
Machinarium's a different sort of game, I thought? Puzzles, but it's all visual. Never really got into that sort of thing.

Figured out what Hotline Miami reminded me of!
Dreamweb!
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/dreamweb/dreamweb-4.png

grim fandango probably still the pinnacle of the genre imo

huh dreamweb looks a LOT like it

Three games that have appeared so far are in the new Humble Bundle, fyi

https://www.humblebundle.com

monaco was a disappointment to me - i was really looking forward to it. the only other game in that bundle i'm somewhat interested in is dust - has anyone heard anything about it?

Sorry, I should have said "two" games...

#67 (tie): Antichamber – PC – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/e5V0ifp.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Telegraph | Financial Post | Trailer

I loved letting this game confuse the hell out of me. It never felt easy, and it never felt unfinishable*. A shame that not many people saw or played this because it's easily the best Portal-style puzzler since... Portal. *I never actually finished it, but I got close, so this counts. - Will M.

From the first hour or so in, indie Escherian puzzler Antichamber does seem to live up to the hype. - Sanpaku

Is _Hotline Miami_ based on an oldish (90s, I guess) game?
It looks really familiar, but I have no idea what the game it reminds me of is. Definitely top-down view and ultraviolent. With pretty smooth animations, as I recall it. Not sure if Amiga or PC. Probably PC.

yeah, there's some mid to late '90s PC game it's strongly reminding me of too. First thing that came to mind was The Chaos Engine, but I think the game in mind was similar but later.

Dust is supposedly pretty good for its genre, as far as (furry) Metroidvanias go. I've heard similar thoughts about Guacamelee.

Bought Antichamber on someone's recommendation here early in the year, never got to it though. Damn borked Windows partition

Hotline Miami isn't based on a specific game, but clearly visually inspired by the movie Drive and Amiga titles from the era, like Dreamweb, Chaos Engine, etc.

a shame to see nobody else voted for antichamber. the game had so many "aha" moments compressed into it that it felt like absolute vg puzzle porn. imagine that didn't sound gross, and that's antichamber. excellent little game.

ugh i said "aha" moment kmn

i believe you, and am really looking forward to it (once i wipe this partition and install Windows 8 zzzzzzzz)

who doesn't love "aha" moments?

its on my list to get to, hell i may have already bought it and forgot -_-

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuN7kOW7iwo

#67 (tie): Cursed Treasure 2 – Browser – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/ZpWT9W8.jpg

Game | Charlie's Point of View | ghacks.net | Gameplay

the Cursed Treasure 2 game is hella fun. Especially like that one of the towers looks like a TARDIS. - Leee

Ahhh, I love Cursed Treasure. Just a damn good take on the Tower Defence genre.

I guess I could just consolidate them, but I'd rather not...

#67 (tie): Candy Box 2 – Browser – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/NSDpDHh.jpg

Game | TechHive | Joystiq | 17' speed run

all the fun of RPG progression, without much grinding or plot or point, click click click - Euler

Euler otm

Click click click.

Will 'twitch plays pokemon' be eligible for the 2014 poll? Even if you're not even going to attempt to do anything other than watch it?

#67 (tie): Euro Truck Simulator 2 – PC/Linux – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/H4wWmez.jpg

Website | Metacritic | PC Gamer | Spazio Games | Let's Play | Trailer

EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR 2

Euro Truck is great, although none of the cities really look like the places they're meant to be. - JimD

ok this seems like the time to ask - what is the appeal of euro truck? is there actually a game or is it just about driving down the highway?

this game has a surprisingly large fanbase

also in retrospect i hate candy box, it feels like even more of a waste of time than my other wasteful, compulsive gaming pursuits

yes on the latter but that's one great thing about it: it casts self-reflective light on click click click what was I saying

i don't know about that - i don't think i'll feel that way about Diablo or Borderlands or Marvel Puzzle Quest etc. but candy box it an HTML experiment gone horribly wrong; but i suppose so many F2P games use the same ideas now

speaking of which...

#67 (tie): Diablo III – PS3/X360 – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/FKKm4r3.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Game Informer | Official XBox | Trailer

Diablo III

Coint and Plick 2013 - The Sixth Annual ILX Video Game Poll

The mindless killkillkill is perfect for alleviating flu-enhanced irritation. - Elvis Telecom

http://i.imgur.com/FKKm4r3.jpg

My kingdom for a post preview. :(

My unsent blurb for Euro Truck:

Scores points for the maps really, the idea that you've got a whole miniaturised Europe to explore is great even if you are confined to the motorways. Also I got a real uncanny valley moment in this when I turned on the in-cab radio and it was streaming a real german dubstep station while I was driving down the M62. Totally could've been real life (if I knew how to drive).

And no, there's not much of a game, although you can choose to take the "running a haulage company" stuff seriously if you like. And it does gamify the map just by giving you a percentage completion stat and occasional "you discovered Sheffield!" messages etc.

kinda nice to have a game with such a mundane theme and unexciting gameplay

really

http://technabob.com/blog/2011/11/25/penn-teller-desert-bus-ios-android-app/

My kingdom for a post preview. :(

that's ridiculous, man! request the mods add a post preview option for everyone instead?

Cursed Treasure 2 ate an entire day of my life. I didn't even really enjoy it, I just compulsively played it for about 19 hours straight, neglecting all but the most essential bodily functions, and then never touched it again.

I tried not to vote for stuff released in previous years as it seemed like those titles had been covered already, and it didn't seem fair to have something like the Walking Dead on the rankings again. Same with fez, which I liked and finally played, but was released earlier.

#67 (tie): Knightmare Tower – iOS/Android/Browser – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/X6Rtwto.jpg

Game | Touch Arcade | 148 Apps | Trailer

Guys, get Knightmare Tower. It's great. - forksclovetofu

nobody else on knightmare tower? I just finished and it was great. - forksclovetofu

i bet i know who voted for it

loooooool (sorry forks)

ha! it is awesome though! An endless runner with RPG elements and no bullshit iap.

Oh, I played the browser version a while back, it was fun. I think maybe pre-2013 though, and that's why I didn't vote for it? Otherwise it should've made the list, even if only as a 5-pointer.

Also that studio did theBurrito Bison games, which are worth a play if you like that one. Casual running/bouncing/flying games with neat graphics and silly concepts.

#67 (tie): Pom Gets Wi-Fi – PC – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/NZWQIyO.gif

Website | DeviantArt | Fanfic | Wiki | Trailer

Pom is a crazy, internet obsessed pomerian with a too serious friend named Shibe. Pom is always seen carrying with her a purple laptop and is almost always heard talking in internet slang. - Pom Wiki

Tumblr in game form. I'm embarrassed to admit this game made me ship two cartoon dogs. - reddening

Hahaha, OMG

wtf

yessssss pom gets wifi! a loving tribute to the batshit livejournal/tumblr culture of years past, complete with a boss battle that occurs only because your opponent implies that your favorite slash pairing isn't legitimate.

O_O

this sounds awesome.

Downloading the mac version now.

omg this fanfic you linked to, polyphonic, bless your dedication to this rollout.

#67 (tie): Device 6 – iOS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/ruPwpVl.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Game Informer | Pocket Gamer UK | Trailer

everyone should get device 6; it's great. try it for a great evening. - forksclovetofu

This beautiful puzzle game requires all of your senses, which is why I was unable to successfully complete the first chapter of it while baked. - polyphonic

apparently i only know one way to describe things and that's "great"
Device 6 posits the idea of written text as maze; learning to navigate and backtrack within the story itself is hypnotic and fascinating. the sound cues are supersmart and the puzzles are difficult but not (with one exception for me) "i have to look this up on the internet" difficult. it was close to my fave game of the year.

I say everything "rules" or "sucks". I'm 12.

I almost regret clicking over to the Knightmare Tower webgame. Two, maybe three hours ... now I'm smashing into the ceiling and thinking I don't care quite enough to do all the quests + get all the powerups. Thank god.

Pom Gets Wi-Fi is awesome, you guys.

loving this rollout. wish i wasn't at work so i could download/play all of these right now.

#67 (tie): Scurvy Scallywags – iOS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/EmOw0oJ.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Grumpy Gamer | Joystiq | Trailer

match 3 but sliding from the sides! evade the baddies! use weapons! sorry I was clicking - Euler

Scurvy Scallywags has taken my soul! Make it stop... - hyggeligt

ha! i forgot about that game, but i played it all the way through, good stuff.

match 3s have completely ruled my world this year

scurvy was good for a while, but eventually you hit a point where you're just too good and there's no more difficulty or chance.

Device 6 was amazing at first but after a while you start to see through the unique interface and then you realise you're really just playing Myst.

#67 (tie): Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time – iOS/Android – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/18Mr17p.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Level Up | Destructoid | Trailer

It's about time! The sequel to the hit action-strategy adventure is here. Join Crazy Dave on a quirky trip through time where you'll meet, greet and defeat legions of zombies from the dawn of time to the end of days. Amass an army of powerful new plants and power up your defenses with amazing new ways to protect your brain. And that's just the beginning! The future holds many mysteries . . . also zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. - EA Marketing Dept.

That looks like the street where I live hope the zombies not attack me. - scraftsf, 3 days ago

#67 (tie): Dungeon Plunder – iOS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/SUOke08.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Pocket Tactics | Indie Mine | Trailer

slept on? way better than Tower of Fortune or King Cashing, b/c you move around the world, lots of little fights, scales up nicely; LOOT! you can level; no plot thank goodness; slot combat actually pretty fun b/c of the mix & match choices on what to keep each spin - Euler

it is absolutely maddening how much i'm dying in dungeon plunder. i get that's the point, but still. - s.clover

i'm currently obsessed with dungeon plunder . it's a roguelike, but it has quasi-king cashing mechanics, but with way more skill involved - i.e., actual decisions about how to battle enemies, rather than trying to stop a wheel at the right moment ... the interface/graphics aren't as polished as king cashing 2, but the actual combat is so much more satisfying! - Karl Malone

PvZ2 should really have got my disappointment of the year vote, it was pretty dreadful.

#67 (tie): Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate – WiiU/3DS – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/gcwid8a.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Polygon | Nintendojo | Newbie Guide | Trailer

The basic idea is to venture out into the wilds, find an impressive monster, kill it, and then make hats and swords out of its entrails – but there’s a lot more to it than that. - Keza MacDonald, IGN

Otaku Dark Souls [This is the description for Monster Hunter 3?] - diamonddave85

oh sorry, that bracketed text was me asking. haha

#67 (tie): Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – PS3/PS4/X360/Xbone – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/8fSCEND.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Action Trip | Quarter to Three | Hydro | Trailer

I'm currently at 70% in Black Flag and, yeah, really enjoyed it so far. I've only played a tiny bit of the first AC, so the whole thing is quite fresh to me. There's been a few too many 'follow this person and don't get caught' missions, but the creeping around, knifing guards in the back stealth stuff never gets old. Mostly I'm just enjoying sailing to desert islands over choppy seas as the crew sings shanties, and pickling fights with big fuck off Spanish galleons loaded with booty. - DavidM

Finished 4. It kicked major ass. Still too many "follow that man - oops, you failed!" sections of the story, but everything outside the story was a blast. Now I'm wandering around with a group of thugs killing every guard in Havana. Good times. - EZ Snappin

pvz2 was a lotta fun while it lasted. i went thru all the levels except didn't unlock all the keys in later worlds.

then they updated and got rid of the keys, but i really am not excited about going back and playing the stuff that's opened up since.

the new linear worlds are sorta dumb too -- wish there was a middle ground.

king cashing 2 would have been another big disappointment for me -- the line between random enjoyment and random grind is sorta thin. ditto tower of fortune 2. or maybe i'm just through with that mechanic. got the space thing from the same devs -- war of the eclipse, and that also just felt somewhat brutal and dull (but then i'm terrible at twitch mechanics so...)

#67 (tie): Let's Play: Ancient Greek Geometry – Browser – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/rCKzcCD.jpg

Game | Official Blog | Games That Teach | Gameplay

ℝolliℵg M∀th Thr∑a∂

ruler & compass constructions were the original video game. after masturbation maybe. just about as much fun too! - Euler

pom gets wi-fi looks so awesome!

ancient greek just missed my ballot. expected to play it for a few minutes, ended up spending the better part of a workday trying to hide it from my coworkers.

do you work at Cool Jock Studios or do they just prefer babylonian math

ironically the vg studio i work for doesnt like it when i play vgs instead of working which is weird right?

do u really work at a vg studio?

yes indeed and i am fully expecting the title i worked on for ~18mo to show up somewhere in the 40s on this list

if you made marvel puzzle quest i hate you and can i please have a blue spidey cover

I will lol if you suddenly get a flood of blue Bagman covers

fuck no i dont work for d3p but i saw job apps on their site and i was like fffffffffffffffffffffuuuuu i would get so many covers if i got that job$$$

(there was one job in specific i wouldve fully applied for if i were american)

Please tell me you worked on deadly premonition: the directors cut

#67 (tie): Nimble Quest – iOS/Android/PC/Ouya – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/66LVijR.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Apple N Apps | Modojo | Trailer

not a classic by any stretch but it was the perfect toilet game for me this year & so that's...a lot of time. also think of my vote as partly a vote for Tiny Tower, same company but I didn't start playing Tiny Tower until this year. - Euler

I had a spree on nimble quest this weekend, I got the demon and the forest freak and everybody has 2 stars and it is devastating. Until I get to graveyard 2 and shit gets completely out of hand - but that's how the depths felt, and the castle before that, so I know I can overcome once I get over the fact that all the other levels are totally boring now. Oops. - El Tomboto

i like the gameplay, but sort of wish there was more going on. - s.clover

oh shit I forgot about Nimble Quest

ha, another game I played a lot of but forgot about! it's pretty good, but I hit that wall too, I think around Graveyard 2 also. "perfect toilet game" indeed!

#67 (tie): The Last Door: Chapter 1 - The Letter – iOS/PC – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/mu6yC48.jpg

Website | Metacritic | 148 Apps | Gamespot | Trailer

A horror point&click adventure, a little cheesy and trope-heavy at times, but overall I was surprised by how disquieting it managed to be! The intro alone was some heavy shit for something so pixelated and basic-looking. - reddening

Oh, yeah, that series is quite good.

i also forgot about nimble quest, despite sinking about 5-6 hours into it, at least. graveyard 2 was my stopping point as well. fucking graveyard 2.

i think that was the "all right, pay us NOW mwuahaha" gate that's not in Nimblebit games, but it's lot of other F2Pers

#67 (tie): The Room Two – iOS/Android – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/Vv7c3HE.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Arcade Sushi | CNET | Trailer

Like the original, each level of The Room 2 locks you in a single location and tasks you with solving a series of connected puzzles. But this time around they're much more complex. Puzzle boxes are still in place, of course, and they're as intricate as ever, but the challenges now include everything from working typewriters and crossbows to model pirate ships and tarot card tables. Each room has multiple objects to interact with, and you'll be moving back and forth between them constantly — opening a panel on one object could have an effect on the other side of the room, and figuring out how these things interact with one another is immensely satisfying. When you solve a puzzle in The Room 2, it really makes you feel clever. - Andrew Webster, The Verge

I WISH I WORKED ON DEADLY PREM :(

i probably don't need to be as cagey as i am being. just having my irl name attached and talking abt stuff on """social media""" cd get me in trouble. it was batman. and by "worked on" i mean i wrote test cases. hah.

(xposts to jjj)

sometime i will hop on my sock puppet & let ppl ask me questions on ILG if there's interest.

every time i see something about these games i think it's referring to the 8bit game tribute to The Room, as in Tommy Wiseau: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/547307

I unlocked all the characters in Nimble Quest; is that past Graveyard 2? I suppose I could play it to see; is it ever a bad time to retreat to the toilet?

i write test cases for a living, wish i could do it for video games or just things generally related to batman.

i think it's referring to the 8bit game tribute to The Room

I thought about including some Room jokes tbh

never heard of the last door, may try it.

#67 (tie): Their Angelical Understanding – Interactive Fiction – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/6THAHeF.jpg

Game | Blog | Puppystuff

My favourite Porpentine of 2013. I like the way that she'll rehearse themes on twitter, spending a day or two trying out endless variations until she finds the one that resonates best, so that what goes into the games feels very distilled. Casino zone! - Gravel

#67 (tie): Thomas Was Alone – PS3/Vita/Linux – 10 pts – 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/UBFZATQ.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Gamespot | Thunderbolt | Trailer

Thomas Was Alone is far more charming than it has any right to be - kingfish

... the smugness of Innocent smoothies in game form - zappi

hotline miami/thomas was alone ... there is no point in congratulating designers for making ugly looking shit. im not a frame rate asshole, but i also dont want to keep rewarding people for art styles that were born out of limitation in the early days, not laziness. and lets be fair, the mario games are beautiful. no one 15 years from now is going to make art based on this shit, because its garish and ugly FOR THE SAKE OF BEING GARISH AND UGLY. or in the case of thomas was alone, because somebody didnt want to hire a pixel artist. if you are a game reviewer, do me a favor and jam a nintendo stylus in your eye the next time you try to use "minimal" as a positive term, it just encourages these assholes. - jjjusten

How do you cry to blocks? - FullOfFlail, 8 days ago

damn jjjusten dropping the hammer

i agree with you about 90% -- "minimalism" as a word is ridiculously overrused, it implies artistic merit when there often isn't any... BUT BUT BUT there are SOME examples where the "minimalism" is actually, like, artistically valid and totally a decision and p rad. i'm thinking of some of (SOME OF) jason rohrer's work, and in a sort-of-not-really-roundabout way deadly prem. shit on iOS that looks "minimal" just to look more like iOS is p despicable, and the fuckton of stuff that came out around the birth of x360 "summer of arcade" is navel-gazing circle-jerky ANTI-ART of the likes that will ensure that the medium will never, ever actually attain any sort of "artistic relevance."

neither of those games are ugly!

i really like the way hotline miami looks (as discussed above) but otherwise i generally agree that minimalism often just means no aesthetic vision worth discussing. on that note, braid is like the ugliest game ever made. by contrast, Michael Brough games are "ugly" but gorgeous + aesthetically perfect in their ugliness.

i definitely don't wanna shit on Thomas, haven't played it and it seems like people don't like the art for the wrong reasons. Meant it more generally (looking at things like Threes on one hand and things like Retro City Challenge or Meat Boy or whatever on the other).

Hotline Miami looks super cool PRECISELY b/c it is not "minimalist"!

And Braid was kinda hideous but at least it was hideous in a new, risky way -- imagine it looked like meat boy, ugh ugh ugh

The character design on Braid was weird, sure, but the backgrounds were so pretty!

#67 (tie): Tearaway – Vita – 10 pts – 1 votes - TOP VITA EXCLUSIVE

http://i.imgur.com/TjHNYVv.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Metro UK | PlayStation Lifestyle | Trailer

Tearaway is a world of rustling paper constructs, crinkling and curling and flapping with the lovingly hand-touched flutter of stop-motion animation. Everything here is made of paper. The trees, the cities, the sky, the creatures. A windy seaside city with frothing waves clutching at the shore is rendered entirely in paper. Confetti is the currency. Sometimes you’re tasked with using a simple system of cutting shapes out of construction paper to lend this world your own interpretation of fire, stars, or snowflakes. - Tom Chick, Quarter to Three

Tearaway is fun - Sgt. Biscuits

I haven't finished Tearaway yet but I voted for it, played another chunk today actually and I love it more and more. I think it has a great solution to the user-generated-content idea, which has always failed before for me because it's usually off in its own little corner and I never bother spending any time there. But Tearaway regularly insists that you stop platforming for a minute to customise the way a scarecrow's face will look for the rest of the game, or to decorate a pig you're about to ride around on, or to design a flag that'll then keep appearing through the rest of the level. There's a lovely bit where you enter the snowy level (it's still a 3D platformer after all) and an NPC says "bah, white snowflakes are boring, design us a more interesting one" and then the snowflake you make becomes all the snowflakes that drift around that whole mountain. The further you go into the game the more it feels like you really are running around in a world you've made yourself.

Also the music (and general atmosphere) are LOVELY, it's perfect English pastoral (recorders, modal scales, occasional mentions of mummers etc). So that all pushes my buttons too.

Plus the fun hardware-based gimmicks like getting you to poke your fingers through the back of the console right into the screen etc, all lovely little moments.

Can't recommend it enough tbh, I scored everything with a flat 10 points this year but this was actually very close to being my game of the year.

many xposts, but do ppl on here play fallen london???

the art in thomas seemed really tied to the gameplay (at least for the characters). like i can't imagine the same game if there were actually interesting looking main character sprites?

^ yeah this exactly, ilthe game dynamics actually require the character design to be that way, it's not just aesthetic laziness.

#66: Animal Crossing: New Leaf – 3DS – 10 pts – 1 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/RT3jv0t.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Guardian | Toronto Sun | Wikia | Trailer

Same as most Nintendo stuff these days, this is just the same game again except a bit better. In the past though I've always played solo and the fun has come from sending rude notes to cute bunnies. What made it great this time was playing it as a proper family game, we had two parents and a child all living in the same village, working towards shared goals, competing in bug hunts or fishing tournaments, comparing furniture collections. One letter I got from our little lad was so amazingly cute that it wasn't just a favourite gaming moment ever, it was probably a favourite parenting moment. So yeah, my game of the year. - JimD.

hi will m i also w0rk for a vg gjbdfgjdbf;gkjd i am terrified to post this

i rly need a new username but i've branded this one so well!!

hahahahaha WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO US

many xposts, but do ppl on here play fallen london???

― cardamon, Friday, February 21, 2014 1:34 AM (14 hours ago)

It's been included in the poll a couple of times. I think most people got bored of it, though, but I still play it sporadically.

for me i see no real separation between hotline miami and retro city rampage in pure ugliness, in fact i could have included retro city rampage in the same rant - again, part of my ire for hotline is that it just straight up should NEVER have been ported to console, its basically unplayable imo. or i suck. or both.

wrt thomas was alone, the minute i saw "minimalist design" and "narrator" i knew it was not a game for me, as the worlds biggest hater of that super narrated thing from last year that i have apparently blocked from my memory. so, the biggest and only draw of a game is the awesome (hint: probably not awesome) narrator? well make a fucking text adventure then.

you did include it, i just got rid of it. sorry!

retro city rampage is purely directed homage/reference/Family Guy-style 8-bit ugliness, won't argue for that one, it is what it is

hotline miami though is this delicious stew, everything from the grotesquely detailed bloody pixel animations and the weird intense music and the saturated colors, it's all quite deliberate and artful, if often ugly. side note: i wonder the creators were into skateboarding as kids, the aesthetic definitely reminds me of that era

bastion, that was the one from last year i hated. wise old narrator bullshit blahhhhh

like portal i guess has a narrator of sorts, but its done right, nearly everyone else gets it horrendously wrong, i get the feeling that the stanley parable might do it pretty well but my mac is the equivalent of a treadle driven sewing machine at this point so i will never actually know.

holy shit even refurbed Macs are expensive, what the hell

stanley parable narrator is okay, just barely this side of not embarrassing

I liked Thomas Was Alone just due to the contrast between the stripped-down design vs the lives all these blocks were living, as imparted by the narrator.

apparently i own thomas was alone from some past humble bundle so i will play it now

still hoping Steam Machines will come through decently I can still keep Mac'in away, but thankfully 90% of these higher profile indie games go Mac now. i think Stanley Parable is planned, and Antichamber just got ported for Humble Bundle, I see

i should try Thomas Was Alone, too

stanley parable definitely already ported. i have it on steam + have played it on my mac

yeah stanley isn't "about" the narrator like other games of the ilk are "about" it -- at least not all the time. it has a lot more surprises packed in it.

oh nice, i didn't realize. come on HIB 12!

Hotline Miami had some kind of narrative thing going on but 90% of the game is in the gameplay, which is fast and viscous yet at the same time not unlike figuring out a puzzle.

sorry if i am coming off as a hater in this thread, not trying to be a dick i just have my own hangups i guess abt game design

I think the core of your point is completely correct. We're just never going to agree which nostalgic games are the terrible ones.

NES emulation proves that you can't go home again.

but SNES emulation + N64 emulation are fantastic

hotline miami is basically unplayable with a gamepad, though, so the critique makes sense.

the game doesn't actually play anything like a(ny) NES game though. it doesn't look like a gamepad was in mind for that all, and they shoehorned it in

NES emulation is great for the great games, just like any other system

This discussion is making me want to try out the game just so I can pick a side

cardamon i still play fallen london every day and i have for about a year now

i really don't know why anymore

Noooooooo I have just realized I committed a terrible error on my ballot by not realizing that a particular game came out in January fuck

If it hasn't showed up yet i can adjust

Haha well it's me so of course it hasn't showed up "yet"

Message sent, ignore if it's a pain in the ass

you can always revote for it next year

Oh that was unclear, didn't realize something came out in jan 2013

If it came out in January 2013 there isn't a problem.

No no, it came out in 1/13 and I failed to vote for it, hence the problem

Aaaaaaaah. I thought you were saying you voted for something that wasn't eligible. Late night comprehension is poor.

I BEAT HOTLINE MIAMI ON A PS VITA IT ISNT SO BAD ON DUAL STICKS

oh damn, that is legit impressive. i figured that doing it with a touchpad instead of mouse was a pain in the ass, but can't imagine.

Yeah i was convinced mouse+keys is the only way to play but I imagine dual analog sticks working pretty well.

I played Retro City for a minute, it was sort of fun, but Hotline Miami is leaps and bounds above and would've made a great game even with top of the line graphics. RCR not so much.

Yeah, Retro City Rampage was so disappointing

alas my vote change is not meant to be because it would bone up the ranking numbers. poly if you just want to post it as a nonplacer with a picture of me all sadfaced next to it, or i can do the same when the time comes, i would hate for people to miss out on that blurb (not mine, the one i sent you). or i can just talk about it in the post rollout.

Sorry, busy morning here. I'll try to get some new ones up this afternoon.

u soulless monstar

it is still technically afternoon where i live just sayin

It's nearly bedtime where I live, ya dawdlers.

#65: Pokemon X & Y - 3DS - 10 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/o0IraCl.jpg

Website | Metacritic X | Metacritic Y | Eurogamer | Polygon | Trailer

I've been playing for about a week now. The new graphics are nice but I don't think it's a huuuuuuge step up from Black/White.

Random things I like about this game: Hawlucha, Restaurant Le Yeah's triple battles (it made it so easy to get my team levelled up between the 30s/40s without grinding), the storyline giving you a few really decent Pokemon in the first half of the game, new moves, new 'fairy' type, being able to see distribution of EVs, Pikachu's voice acting

Dislikes: only Pikachu gets voice acting, poor camera angling and lack of any on-screen map when in lumiose city, 'horde battles', that some of the ppl who challenge you to battles are a bit freaky/zombie-like in their 2D drawings, too many challengers with fighting types, two dimensional Stunfisk. - salsa shark

#64: Fish Out of Water! - iOS - 11 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/BU0Gbzz.jpg

Website | Metacritic | 148 Apps | App Smile | Trailer

Fish Out of Water is easy to dismiss. You pick up a fish, you throw it. That’s it. It bounces off the water, and eventually falls in. The crabs hold up cards with scores, you feel like you failed to throw the fish well. But, amazingly, you do learn that there are right and wrong ways to throw fish. And then this stupid game becomes very intricate with a whole bunch of depth. - s.clover

yay an 11-pointer!

we're past the #65s!

Wish I knew what Salsa Shark was saying there - I plan to pick up X or Y next month, it'll be my first pokeymans ever. Well, not counting that boss GB rumble-pak pinball game.

The only Pokemon I ever played was Pokemon Snap. It ruled.

we're past the #65s!

That was only one game though

#56 (tie): Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - PS3/X360/PC - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/UCRj4As.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Giant Bomb | PC Gamer | Trailer

I played the first few levels of Brothers. The puzzles are more or less like Ratchet and Clank's puzzles, except you're moving both characters simultaneously. Each analog stick and trigger corresponds to one of the two brothers. Lots of climbing, lots of beautiful scenery. If you want something super challenging this probably isn't for you. - polyphonic

Brothers makes the hemispheres of my brain feel like they're pulling themselves apart in a good way. Never played anything like that before so I have no idea if that style of gaming is old hat by now or what. - Old Lunch

Brothers is a dullards paradise, full of fakey language annoyance and sentimental mush. pointless twin stick is not a fucking innovation, and neither are puzzles that all but slap you across the face with tedium and transparency. yes, im sure that there is a deep story about loss and or something else sad and poignant, but i could read a goddamn book with the time it would take to alternately climb haybales or turn my 15th crank to raise a gate. fuck this game. - jjjusten

i swear i liked some stuff too this year guys!

You were too kind, John. This game was negative fun.

seems like that was kind of a theme this year. critics overrating sensitive games. the sandy hook effect? /gross-generalization

In fairness, I played about ten minutes of it and haven't gone back to it since. Are there other games that have you performing different actions simultaneously with the two sticks? Because that's the bit I liked best. It felt like solid brain exercise.

To me it didn't seem especially sensitive or mushy. A couple of brothers wandering out into the world to solve puzzles to save their village/elders/whatever, not unlike Link or Fez or Nier or a thousand other platformers. And the lack of dialog was a huge selling point for me.

I dig gentle, subdued games and wish there were more quality ones to choose from. Like, ones that aren't necessarily geared towards eight-year-olds, maybe.

btw i am over level 100 on fishy throw game (that's over 300 mini quests completed). it is perfect for the train. i also have maybe 3 perfect 10 scores.

trying to remember the dual stick dual shooter thing on XBLA from years ago but drawing a blank

#56 (tie): Farming Simulator 2013 Titanium Edition - PC - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/ODn5Jsb.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Cape Cod Times | IGN | Titanium Edition Reviews | Let's Play | Trailer

Gameplay consists largely of driving slowly up and down in straight lines. You plough the field this way, you sow the seeds this way, you harvest the crop by doing the same thing, and then you cultivate the soil back into a sowable state by driving up and down once more. - Dan Whitehead, Eurogamer

ok who voted for the farm game

trying to remember the dual stick dual shooter thing on XBLA from years ago but drawing a blank

Okay, maybe not quite that gentle and subdued.

Sunbathing Simulator 2015. Watch for it.

oops, got the points wrong on that image :(

nah it wasnt geometry wars, you controlled two ships one with each stick. was named something that referenced the mechanic.

i may have sarcastically told polyphonic to donate my leftover points to farming simulator 2013

#56 (tie): Darkstalkers Resurrection - PS3/X360 - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/hOmlU7j.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Escapist | Gaming Trend | Trailer

Your favorite 2D fighter (a thinly-veiled Darkstalkers thread)

This is, without a doubt, the greatest 2D fighting game ever. The Darkstalker character roster is my favorite in all of fightdom and it's based on the same fighting engine as Street Fighter 2. It's not horribly over-complicated but it rewards in-depth study and frame-rate interruption to chain combos. - DJP

i may have sarcastically told polyphonic to donate my leftover points to farming simulator 2013

That's what sarcasm'll getcha

thanks for muckin' it up bnw

darkstalkers! i forgot that got rereleased. i loved that crap

hah, never realized there was a fighting thread on ILE either

had never heard of Darkstalkers and as a Street Fighter stan I will be checking it out I think

Wish I knew what Salsa Shark was saying there - I plan to pick up X or Y next month, it'll be my first pokeymans ever. Well, not counting that boss GB rumble-pak pinball game.

― Nhex, Tuesday, February 25, 2014 2:24 AM (17 hours ago)

X/Y or even black/white are good as first pokemon games, all the stuff I rambled about will be obvious once you start playing (aside from stuff about EVs but really that has little bearing on your ability to complete the game). Just be prepared for the stupidest 'storylines' imaginable.

I want everyone to go grab Darkstalkers Resurrection NOW

It is so much FUN and it will make your thumbs fall off

#56 (tie): Spelunky - PS3/Vita/PC - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/GUPxGCB.gif

Original Game | Website | Metacritic | Hardcore Gamer | Gamespot | Trailer

Coint and Plick 2013 - The Sixth Annual ILX Video Game Poll | spelunky (rogue-like platformer for pc mac xbla etc)

Spelunky is either the most compelling 2D platformer I've played since Cave Story (since I don't own a console, I haven't been able to play any of the post-SNES Marios), or I have Stockholm Syndrome from constantly dying in the Ice Caverns. - one way street

it's stockholm syndrome

xp to DJP yessir!

#56 (tie): Rocksmith 2014 Edition - PS3/X360/PC/Mac - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/boQdaeX.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Digital Fix | Worth Playing | Trailer

Everything I hated about the original Rocksmith (which wasn't very much) was removed and replaced with sheer unadulterated awesome. This game is single-handedly teaching me how to play the guitar; the only reason I don't play it more is because my wife keeps bogarting the television. - DJP

i may have sarcastically told polyphonic to donate my leftover points to farming simulator 2013

quick, reallocate them to jjj's missing game

or just give it a post-rollout blurb. that is fine too

I'm not seeing any images, is it just my internet which is broken?

I'll post jjj's thing as a honorable mention once I finish the other 56's

DJP, are you on Xbox or PS3? (either way, I'll wait for the DS:R to go on sale again)

great Spelunky gif!

PS3/4

salsa shark: yeah, my expectations are low in that regard haha

Oh I had no idea this happened, if I did Monster Hunter would've got another top vote.

Otaku Dark Souls [This is the description for Monster Hunter 3?] - diamonddave85

Not that otaku-y - for example someone completely green to rpgs in general like me thinks it's the greatest thing ever and the universe is not anime-like or filled with any of the jrpg story/worldbuilding elements -- it's a pretty grounded, 'realistic' world with no real magic that just happens to have out of this world dinosaurs in it

Except for talking cats and stuff, but yknow. Its mechanics are reminiscent of dark souls though which is why I always hope a little of the hype for that series could spill over. It's slowly getting more popular and the fanbase is devoted but not like that.

Spelunky image reminded me of a NES game I had fond but vague memories of, searching around I found that it was Digger T. Rock. Looks pretty bad from the videos of it on youtube. I was a stupid child.

3rd year in a row that spelunky placed?

every community has its traditions

chrono trigger yet to place tho

I approve unreservedly of spelunky but was never able to extract the slightest pleasure from playing it.

Nice to see Ultimate Business Tycoon make it - I almost voted for that but I love Understanding more, porp is the best.

#56 (tie): Puppeteer - PS3 - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/e5WREe8.jpg

Website | Metacritic | NZ Gamer | Canadian Online Gamers | Trailer

Gorgeous looking, plays like a dream, great score, constantly inventive and well written and weird without ever becoming kitschy. It's a game that really lives comfortably in its own skin, it knows exactly what it wants to be and does that without ever really slipping the gears. How this released as a semi-budget title and still failed is a complete and total mystery to me. - jjjusten

This one got kind of lost during the holiday shuffle, it didn't really get much mainstream play at all IMO. Looking forward to playing it, though.

Puppeteer is probably my biggest "I wish I'd gotten around to that" game from last year

That looks great. Sadly will never have a chance to play it, oh well.

#56 (tie): Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time - PS3/Vita - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/jLvJzDe.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Game-Over | Digital Chumps | Trailer

If 3d platforming can really ever be called "old-school", this probably fits the bill. Looks great, plays great, unrepentantly uninterested in innovation. the bad: load times, characters and script are painfully old-school as well (read: cutesy and annoying). - jjjusten

something gently hilarious about linking to a review of farming simulator at the cape cod times

hey wake me up when you get to the tentpole xbox shooters right guys

DJP making a very compelling case above for me to get rocksmith. do u still love it?

#56 (tie): Ride to Hell: Retribution - PS3/X360/PC - 15 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/330sx9p.gif

Website | Metacritic | EGM | Hardcore Gamer | Zero Punctuation | Bad Game? | trailer

Retribution wipes out hardest, though, by delivering gameplay that’s incompetent across the board. Motorcycle riding is super-skittish, combining annoying obstacle avoidance with super-frustrating button-prompt combat. Tricks require next to nothing in the way of balance or skill: unlike a wheelie or a drift in decent racers, a trick lasts as long as you hold down the button and avoid hitting something. Combat’s even worse, with hand-to-hand fights winnable through mindless button-mashing and super-simple button prompts, plus gunplay that ranges from unfair fights against supremely accurate A.I. to shooting sitting-duck enemies standing together motionless.

The game also harbors a staggering level of bugginess that makes you wonder how it passed certification. At one point, roughly half of our post-death restarts would lead to a hanging load screen, requiring us to quit out to the 360 dashboard. Less frequent (but more baffling) were scenes where we received a new objective but were unable to access the new area, and others where we encountered a debug error message when a new wave of enemies couldn’t properly load.

Even if Eutechnyx patches Retribution’s numerous glitches, there’s no fix for its inherent awfulness. If anything, the game should stay the way it is right now, so the bottom of the barrel is firmly established. - Official XBox Magazine

joining the pantheon of 50 cent blood on the sand and deadly premonition, but with a level of incompetence that honestly has to be seen to be believed. this is the last great mistake of this console generation, and in many ways it backslides further than i could have dreamed of. The script is howlingly terrible, the gameplay seems halfway randomized, plot is incomprehensible, TERRIBLE sexy scenes - hands down the B or maybe Z movie experience of the year, and since its got to be amazingly dirt cheap at this point, you really owe it to yourself to pick it up. - jjjusten

Dishonorable Mention: Anarchy Reigns – PS3/X360 – 0 pts – 0 votes

http://i.imgur.com/SDxVW0Q.jpg

C&Ped this from Wikipedia, it's the anarchy reigns plot summary as written by some deranged lunatic, currently under wiki review and is full of lols. Spoiler alert I guess, but it's so awesomely and appropriately incomprehensible that I didn't want it to vanish before the rollout.

"Maximillian Caxton suffers the pain of visions about killing anyone yells around the city of Altambra where Chaser Guild agent, Jack Cayman quits tobacco smoking because the girl named Stela Fitzgerald tells him that is unhealthy. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Public Safety agents Nikolai Dmitri Bulygin, Leonhardt Victorion and Sasha Ivanoff investigate there to learn where Max is located. After meeting the Blacker Baron and assistant Mathilda, Jack remembers at Milvallen that he is very nice to Stela who is shot and killed by the friendly fire during the rescue and is buried in the graveyard where Maximillian's daughter Jeannie tells Jack that Max drunk too much and had excess drugs and tells Jack to stop the Bureau from killing Max. At Port Valenda, Jack confronts Leo and fight until Max appears out of nowhere and leaves. With Jack forcing himself to kill Max before Baron stops him, Leo protects Max from Nikolai who tries to kill him. At Bari-Shur, Leo refuses Nikolai to kill Max, damaging Nikolai's first form. Jack beats and knocks Max unconscious for shooting Max's wife and killing anyone at the ruined gladiator coliseum, where after reuniting with Sasha, Mathilda and Baron, Jack and Leo having confused for fighting each other confronts Nikolai in his final form who sends his wasted army of drones to kill them. Nikolai knocks all agents unconscous to his own victory, but Jack skewers him in half with his chainsaw and leaves Bari-Shur taking Nikolai's head with him while the recovered Leo and Sasha brings Max back home." - jjjusten

that synopsis is surprisingly similar to the experience of trying to play the game

this fyi is the one i flaked on voting for that i was trying to sub out for *REDACTED* which will i suppose show up later in the poll

in case you can't glean much from that summary, here's what i said about it recently on the unplayable thread:

so its a sequel (kind of?) to madworld, closed world beat-em-up that is also apparently a 20ish character fighting game as well - im hot garbage with regards to fighters, so i am not a good judge. dumb as a brick in many ways, weird "why is this here" vehicle timed lap racing sections, no attempt at even vague coherency, interspersed with completely out of character and hamfisted "touching" dead kid storyline. its a glorious god damn mess so far, not as broken as ride to hell (which well jesus i dont know if anything in recent memory is that broken) but so bafflingly out of step with videogames of the modern day that it is quite refreshing. its no bulletstorm, but its cheap as dirt and solidly in the spirit of this thread.

― Wendy Carlos Williams (jjjusten)

DJP making a very compelling case above for me to get rocksmith. do u still love it?

YES

it's crazy that Anarchy Reigns is as messy as it is, Platinum usually p consistent

#55: Deadly Premonition: Directors Cut - PS3/PC - 15 pts - 1 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/7iR9u8P.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Digital Chumps | Destructoid | Trailer

DEADLY PREMONITION livebloggin and community support group thread. | The Fourth Annual Coint and Plick Video Games Poll - Part Three: #53 - 79

take one of the greatest games of this generation for all the wrong reasons, fix just enough of it to keep people from bailing in the initially horrendous first section, but keep every fucked up charming in your own head weirdness intact, and i cant avoid voting for you. felt a little strange about putting this on my ballot, but dont believe the hype, its a legitimate game fix that makes playing full frenzied enjoyment instead of a chore with tremendous rewards, and the added scenes make the whole thing even more incomprehensible, if thats even possible. dont worry, its still just as broken, but in all the right ways, and even in some astonishing new ways. - jjjusten

i think i actually own this game on the 360 and have never played it. i should really put it in the docket.

#50 (tie): Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon - PS3/X360/PC - 15 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/sUYj0xt.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Darkstation | PC World | Zero Punctuation | Trailer

Played the demo, hated it, but it stuck in my head. bought it when it was cheap, loved it. once you get that it isnt a 30 minute jokey diversion but a pretty fully realized game, it really comes into its own. easily the funniest game of the year, and if nothing else deserves points for the developer fully committing to something that no one believed was real, and was a fairly long shot for success as well. if nothing else, grab the demo and play it realizing that the cut scenes and the mood of the tutorial section are really actually going to be maintained through the entire campaign, and if that hooks you, buy that shit immediately. - jjjusten

Listening to the Blood Dragon soundtrack about as much as I play the game - kingfish

#50 (tie): Doctor Who: Legacy - iOS/Android - 15 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/RQH1nuX.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Digital Spy | God is a Geek | Trailer

Not only is Doctor Who: Legacy very nicely presented, with plenty of episodes to work through and lots of famous characters to add to your fighting team, the actual matching mechanics feel refreshingly different. You can move gems freely around the board to complete your turn, which allows you to build more complex strategies with ease. You'll face off against a wide range of foes from the Doctor Who universe, and each team member comes with their own attack bonuses for tackling certain enemies. So as well as adding a fresh twist to the typical match-three gameplay, Legacy also offers up considerably more strategic depth via its team combat system. - John Bedford, Modojo

I only played this because of the license. It's almost wholly personality-free and I didn't even recognize some of the characters until I read the bios that went along with them, which is really bad when talking about, say, the Doctor's current companion. The gameplay is just good enough to keep this from being useless but it really has nothing to do with Doctor Who. - DJP

i tried the doc who game and found it wholly inferior to marvel puzzle quest

I chucked it five points, it's a reasonable diversion. Just a minor variation on any match-3 game. The characters aren't drawn that well but they're recognisable. Also one of the few games on my Pod that actually allows me to play offline, which is a major plus in my book.

yeah, as much time as i spend in subways i REALLY wish MPQ had that option

#50 (tie): No One Has to Die - Browser - 15 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/xNJRftn.jpg

Game | Pop Matters | Rock Paper Shotgun | TV Tropes | Walkthrough

No One Has To Die, ironically, sees all of its characters dying at one point. They’re all trapped within a huge corporate building, and there’s a fire raging. You were delivering stationery to the building when you noticed that the two security guards in the lobby were dead. Seeing that a monitor was flashing with a warning of a fire, you logged in as a visitor, and that’s when you end up speaking to the other four characters in the building. From your monitor you’re able to tap into the security system, locking doors to protect certain characters from the fire and instructing others to flood other parts, but in doing that, you have to be careful not to drown them as well. - Chris Priestman, Gamejolt

There are puzzles in this but they're not really the point. An interesting bit of speculative fiction in game form. - reddening

Oh yeahhhh that came was really cool. Play it!

Really liked this one. Basically interactive fiction with some minimal graphics, but a good story.

side note for MTL ILXors: first 2 seconds of far cry 3 blood dragon shows nouveau palais. be prepared because i got really confused and wondered if i might be dreaming abt playing the game and not actually playing the game.

There's a bundle coming out in stores soon w/Far Cry 2, 3, and Blood Dragon on disc, will probably pick that up later this year

#50 (tie): Remember Me - PS3/X360/PC - 15 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/VV3GGdZ.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Financial Post | EGM | Trailer

Rather than having the lasting impact of a distinct, vital recollection, Remember Me plays out like a stressful fever dream requiring the player to forget it. The game is an often muddled compilation of memory-centric sci-fi plots (shades of Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days abound), borrowed futuristic visuals, and a creatively restrained battle/platforming system in need of considerable retooling. The myriad cerebral theories presented in the game aim to be bold and innovative, but because of the way players are unadvisedly limited in their traversal of a 2084-set Paris, the blossoming of its customarily interesting ideas is ultimately restricted to the bud phase. - Mike LeChevallier, Slant Magazine

Reminds me most of Enslaved - decently inventive mechanics and way of telling its future dystopia story, kind of easy and short but that works in its favour because it would get boring otherwise. The remix bits were a little bit of a wasted opportunity, but still cool. - if

Blood Dragon was fun! But I was hoping it would be a dumb shooter the whole way through and sort of lost interest at the first stealth mission. But for the glorious intro section it is basically Laser Tag: The Video Game, which I love!

Remember Me is free right now on PS+, FYI, so grab it fools

#50 (tie): Clockwork Cat - Browser - 15 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/LRJHhcL.gif

Game | Gameological | Indie Game Mag | Speed Run

I gave Clockwork Cat a go - that is SUPER CUTE. Shame it's so short, but eh, Ludum Dare, what you gonna do... - emil.y

yeah, this was great.

So cute.

#47 (tie): Pocket Mine - iOS/Android - 20 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/g4uqtxO.jpg

iOS | Android | 148 Apps | IGN Blogs | Trailer

This isn't a triumph of good game design, this is a triumph of modern free-to-play addiction oriented game design. Whatever, I still play. -s.clover

i'm embarrassed to admit i've been playing pocket mine recently - Mordy

but proud to admit i did not vote for it

But it's the 47th best game of 2013!!

if i had thrown it a vote (it happened there were probably 15-20 games above it jostling for a place) it would've only gotten 5 points. very disposable iOS type - easy to play a couple quick rounds (and tho it refills your 'runs' timer through paying, i never felt compelled to buy more runs than i could take at a given time).

#47 (tie): Ollie Ollie Oxen Free - Interactive Fiction - 20 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/ngEMno1.jpg

Browser version | IFDB | Ecclesiastical Revue | Emily Short

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free begins with the protagonist, a teacher, coming to in the moments after his school has been bombed. He has to find six of his students and help them get out of the severely damaged, burning school building. Some students are frightened, some wounded, some have more frustrating or kid-like reasons not to want to leave where they are, so the puzzles chiefly revolve around helping the kids get out. To make things worse, the teacher has himself been gassed, and cannot manipulate things properly, so most steps require asking the kids to do the physical manipulation.

This is a premise I found compelling: the stakes are high, the protagonist is acting nobly, and the situation is about as bad as it can get. The kids and their space are sympathetically drawn, and although they have various quirks that are mildly frustrating (the better to provide puzzles), they come across as endearing and also as having distinct personalities from one another. The protagonist also gets a few touches of personality: he is gay, married to a husband who is currently likely to be in danger. These facts affect how he feels and even (in small ways) how he relates to the students. - Emily Short

Highly recommended game from me. Anyone who likes IF at all should give it a go. A lot of reviews I read found the limitations on the player character's abilities frustrating and annoying, but to me it added a layer of proper puzzling on to the game. Loved the characters, the writing is great, the premise dealt with well. There were a couple of minor bugs and one relatively large thing I wasn't convinced by, but the latter is spoilery, so I won't go into it here.

Excited about that one - will play it! Thanks.

Got through Ultra Business Tycoon III. (damn that readme biz) it's good work. I wish it was a LITTLE less random gameplay-wise, but I guess it works because I'm a softie (my emotions!).

I chucked it five points, it's a reasonable diversion. Just a minor variation on any match-3 game. The characters aren't drawn that well but they're recognisable. Also one of the few games on my Pod that actually allows me to play offline, which is a major plus in my book.

― emil.y, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but the one thing the dr who game has going for it is puzzles and dragons style you can drag the thing as much as you want and not just swap gameplay, which is a nice dynamic, and it has that without lots of free to play nonsense thrown in.

i beat the first set of worlds (season whatever) but the second one had a huge difficulty spike and i gave up.

#47 (tie): Mario & Luigi: Dream Team - 3DS - 20 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/TbWJUzh.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Lazy Gamer | Armchair Empire | Trailer

The core gameplay remains the same between these two modes — exploring, solving puzzles and getting into turn-based battles — but the context changes entirely. The regular game exists in a fully realized cartoon fantasy world, with different shops and towns, multiple regions to explore and tons of random characters to provide flavor text. The dream world is more incorporeal and more directed. Most dream world locations only have two or three rooms and very little in the way of side quests or NPCs to distract you. By hopping back and forth from the dream world regularly, Dream Team successfully provides both the eager exploration of an RPG and the focused get-to-the-end challenge of 2D platformers. But the gameplay variety doesn't stop there. - Philip Kollar, Polygon

#46: Papa Louie 2: When Burgers Attack! - Browser - 20 pts - 1 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/CHXtZmH.jpg

Game | Unbelievably Annoying Let's Play Guy

Sarge and Radley Madish have kidnapped all of your customers in this long-awaited to sequel to Papa Louie: When Pizzas Attack! Marty and Rita will travel to the Land of Munchmore to rescue Papa Louie, and find other trapped customers along the way to help on your journey! Every customer you rescue becomes a new playable character, with unique weapons and a variety of special skills that can help you on your quest. Use your customers’ skills to complete challenges across multiple worlds, and unlock all 28 playable characters on your way to defeat the wild Radley Madish! - game copy

If you're a Kongregate badge junkie, the Papa's Pizzeria/Burgeria/Pancakeria franchise is an annoying glut of badges you get for playing basically the same game over and over again. So I was surprised when this game turned out to be a charming platformer with satisfying physics and a managable level of difficulty! 8 levels with 6 tasks to complete each, 28 unlockable characters with different abilities and weapons, and a bonus level that looks like the wallet section of a Hot Topic exploded. This was the game I came back to the most when I needed to chill out over the summer. - reddening

i found that one... very annoying

I enjoyed Bowser's Inside Story and I've had Dream Team on my eStore wishlist for ages, I don't know why I haven't bought it already. It's not like Mario games ever go down in price. And 20 points from one vote! Wow.

ugh, i started playing Fish Out of Water after it placed upthread and haven't been able to stop. level 22 fish thrower. i already threw a few perfect 10s. my life is...sad

Remember me, which I am now playing, is super on the rails but seriously awesome

I'm playing Dream Team now, because it came with the system and it's something to do while listening to music (I don't have any other game systems). Bowser's Inside Story was great but this game mostly recycles the same gameplay template, sometimes the exact same attacks, with a less interesting and less cute story. Lots of stupid little sequences that you have to waste time watching or clicking through too. But it's fine I guess.

#41 (tie): Paint it Back - iOS - 20 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/yVdYL2t.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Touch Arcade | Modojo | Trailer

I love doing Nonograms, but as soon as the grid gets too big they're difficult to play on a smartphone. This is the first app I've used that makes the interface workable, and the surrounding conceit with the paintings and their clever titles is very cute. - reddening

Didn't know about Fish Out of Water - it's by the Jetpack Joyride/Fruit Ninja guys, I'll have to get it at some point (probably when it goes free)

Paint it Back looks good, but does it actually work on a phone (instead of iPad)?

The interface on PIB bugged me. Not sure why, but I'm just used to the way HD Color Cross does picross.

#41 (tie): Pikmin 3 - WiiU - 20 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/XPGJ6vG.gif

Game | Metacritic | Nintendojo | ZTGD | Commercial

been playing Pikmin 3, sooo fuckin good. - Zappi

Cute game with beautiful graphics and a nice sense of humor. It's definitely a good fit for the Wii U. Marks off for lack of co-op in story-mode as the game seems made for it. And the timer part of the gameplay has been infuriating a few times. Interrupting a boss fight with "the sun's gone down so you have to stop fighting for your life and go home now" spiked my NERDRAGE. - bnw

I haven't played the Wii re-releases of either of the old two, so this was my first time playing Pikmin with controls that suited it, and it was a super charming breeze. - if

i've been playing Paint It Back on my ipod touch (4th gen). I do fat-finger the grid sometimes, but not enough to diminish my enjoyment of it. seriously i've played it so much over the last month that i've started dreaming in rows and columns.

Ok so how is it possible that in a game as literally gorgeous as remember me the main character animation is so terrible?!

Didn't know about Fish Out of Water - it's by the Jetpack Joyride/Fruit Ninja guys, I'll have to get it at some point (probably when it goes free)

― Nhex, Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as far as i know it hasn't gone free even as a promo yet, and its been out a loong time. there's fairly minimal totally avoidable iap in it, so i don't know if they'll ever bother to go free with it, especially since it sadly didn't take off as much as their other stuff. for $1 its totally worth it.

I was the Pocket Mine voter. Sorry everyone.

Remember me, which I am now playing, is super on the rails but seriously awesome

― Corpsepaint Counterpaint (jjjusten), Thursday, February 27, 2014 10:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought this was good to look at but really silly and the combat just wasn't slick enough. Fun though!

Re: Mario and Luigi Dream team, and "And 20 points from one vote! Wow".

Sorry, this was me :) I never got round to writing blurb for any of my votes either because I'm super lazy... I've liked all the Mario & Luigi RPGs so far, and while this is just recycled gameplay from previous iterations, that's pretty much all I wanted from it (and more Broque Monsieur because I'm weird and find him hilarious). On the whole I'm a big fan of RPGs where I don't have to grind, and the M&L games always seem pretty well balanced (or maybe that's just "easy").

wait i gave 10 points to pocket mine too, so the #s for it have gotta be wrong.

Never apologize! I always do a couple of 20pt votes every year

pocket mine should be a 20/2 rather than a 20/1, sorry sc

#41 (tie): Shin Megami Tensei IV - 3DS - 20 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/y1idd99.gif

Website | Metacritic | Destructoid | Worth Playing | Let's Play

With its raw, horror-inspired settings, Shin Megami Tensei IV fits right in with other games in the series, yet in many ways it's unlike anything else in the current 3DS library. It's occasionally weak, held back by menial character development and a frustrating overworld, but it provides a challenging combat system made even more interesting through discussions and arguments with fantastically designed demons. Unfortunately, it's not a pillar of character development, or the best-looking game of its type. It's saved by the lure of the dark and mysterious world and the trials of fighting its inhabitants make Shin Megami Tensei IV a great role-playing game worth seeing through to the end. The excellent combat and the almost never-ending quest to explore the compendium of demons should keep you coming back for more, even if you have a fairly good assumption of what the other endings might entail. - Peter Brown, Gamespot

on shin megami tensei iv: sometimes process is more important than outcome. - Lamp

Pokémon for adults where you have to bribe monsters to join your party and, more often then not, they will just take your items and leave. Great JRPG with an excellent soundtrack - diamondave85

agh that gif! scary!

i'm not sure if Lamp and Diamondave85's comments are actually praise

certainly sounds interesting. there's a couple things here i would like to have a 3DS for. not enough tho. never enough.

3DS took a while to catch up, and i doubt it'll be as awesome as the DS was in terms of library, but it's certainly a worthwhile system at this point. Grab one!

i dont think i had any fun playing smt iv but i spent a lot of time organizing things which is rewarding in its own ways

also i voted for both pokemon and brothers not sure if those got counted? pokemon was really pretty fun, although theres a kind of despair involved in knowing that perfection is always out of reach i had a good couple of weeks down the rabbithole of perfect ivs, pokemon breeding and hunting shinys before giving it up as a lost cause

also i voted for both pokemon and brothers not sure if those got counted? pokemon was really pretty fun, although theres a kind of despair involved in knowing that perfection is always out of reach i had a good couple of weeks down the rabbithole of perfect ivs, pokemon breeding and hunting shinys before giving it up as a lost cause

lol @

http://i.imgur.com/330sx9p.gif

i counted your votes lamp

#41 (tie): Saints Row IV - PS3/X360/PC - 20 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/JkjyepD.jpg

Website | Metacritic | EGM | Eurogamer | Fun | Trailer

Saints Row: The Third

i had so much fun with the SR4 side missions that i wound up completing them all WAY before i was supposed to in storyline, which made some of the late game progress way too quickly. i imagine that after i'm done with GTA5, going back to this/playing around with whatever DLC comes out is gonna be a blast; i really like the crackdown-style physics

also feel like there's a halfway decent thinkpiece somewhere in the character creation/mass effect parody/crew romancing stuff - has a game like this ever treated gender and sexuality so fluidly? - govern yourself accordingly

The Singularity Gun is probably the coolest gun I've ever seen in any 3d game. Shoot it at an intersection and it sucks up people, cars, streetlights, etc. - Adam Bruneau

All the fanservice indulgence with the weapons and costumes is stellar. "Fuck it, we'll put phasers and han solo's blaster in here and fuggin' pulse rifles. Why not" - kingfish

love this game - almost 100%'d it. probably the most pure FUN game of the year - reminded me a bit of just cause 2 re just how enjoyable it was to traverse the city destroying shit

Great game, maybe my favorite of last year. Open world, lots of fun, great super-powers, light on the cutscenes, and the cool glitching graphical effects that distort the world around you was the icing on the cake. I suppose there have been earlier games where you leap from rooftop to rooftop while aliens throw cars at you, but I have never played them. The insurance fraud minigame w super powers is just the kind of insane surreal experience only a videogame could provide. Finally, the overall look of the city at the start, with everything starting out looking like the very first rays of light before sunrise, is a standout in an era that is producing gorgeous games that literally look like dreams.

otm re the insurance fraud minigame. spinning in the air across half the city, getting hit by trucks to pick up speed - very surreal

Re: Mario and Luigi Dream team, and "And 20 points from one vote! Wow".

Sorry, this was me :) I never got round to writing blurb for any of my votes either because I'm super lazy... I've liked all the Mario & Luigi RPGs so far, and while this is just recycled gameplay from previous iterations, that's pretty much all I wanted from it (and more Broque Monsieur because I'm weird and find him hilarious). On the whole I'm a big fan of RPGs where I don't have to grind, and the M&L games always seem pretty well balanced (or maybe that's just "easy").

Noooo as Nhex said, NEVER APOLOGISE! That was more of a 'gee this must be decent' than a 'who does that!?' sort of comment -- I also threw 20 points at a game that is sort of recycled gameplay from previous iterations because that was what I wanted from it (I guess it'll be later in the list..)

I am also a fan of minimal grinding/things other people probably consider 'easy'. I'm disappointed to learn that Fawful isn't in Dream Team, though.

I think I skipped Bowser's Inside Story, so I'm looking more forward to Dream Team than others have

You very well may enjoy it more. I never played Superstar Saga or Partners in Time, and I found Bowser's Inside Story a very novel game.

#41 (tie): State of Decay - X360/PC - 20 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/mkp2FPt.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Quarter to Three | IGN | Trailer

State of Decay - Anticipation

Janky, weird, busted, charming. I was lucky enough to finish this game without it screwing me with its terrible gameplay so maybe I'm rating it higher than I should but I had a lot of fun with it. Loved the concept, from the permadeath on characters to the weird basebuilding/material gathering to the support call-in mechanics to the "persistent" (aka: it checks your clock and makes things happen when you load the game again) world. Best B-game of 2013! - Will M.

Anyone else playing the SoD DLC, Breakdown? It's pretty great. I loved the original game, but once you learned the mechanics it grew to be pretty easy, and this sandbox dlc increases the diffuculty significantly, making it much more challenging. My game of the year. - musicfanatic

Next week I'm going to try to get 11-40 all wrapped up, and then top ten following week.

another one of my votes - never quite fulfills its promise but the closest thing yet to an immersive open world zombie game

never got around to SoD but i still like the idea. maybe someday.

Pom Gets Wifi was pretty hilarious

#39 (tie): Rogue Legacy - PS3/PS4/Vita/PC/Mac/Linux - 20 pts - 3 votes

http://i.imgur.com/aBrTeS0.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | dpad | Trailer

Took me a while to get into this, but once I did it was fantastic. I kinda wish that the genetics stuff was a bit more involved (like, breeding in/out skills, instead of just getting randomly handed flaws every generation) but the actual gp gets really fun once you get the best classes (aw yeah lich king) and some decent equipment/runes. I've beaten 2/5 bosses, hope to finish this game soon! - Will M.

oh i forgot about this game. i thought it sounded cool. imma check this out.

Ultimately I wanted to like Rogue Legacy more than I did, but it's a solid game. It suffers a little in comparison against recent games like Spelunky and FTL (which I couldn't fully get into either). I'm going to give it another try soon

#39 (tie): Card Hunter - Browser - 20 pts - 3 votes

http://i.imgur.com/jMLjstJ.gif

Website | Metacritic | Darkstation | Videogamer | Trailer

Dorky, lovable and deep, Card Hunter has an earnest love for its subject matter. Whether it’s in the little exclamations of “Adventure!” and “A-ha!” from its dungeon master, Gary, the complex systems that make up its turn-based, card collection design, or in its descriptions of caverns and sorcerers’ towers, this is a game that’s built on Dungeons & Dragons foundations and isn’t afraid to show it. - Edge

top fun - no lasting appeal and ran its course pretty quickly, but still top fun - Roberto Spiralli

NEEEEERRRRRRRRRDDDS

I enjoyed(but still haven't finished) SR4. I do think on reflection that the game suffers for being too close to SR3. The character stuff is fun, tho

3 votes!? guess i'll have to give this a try at some point

card hunter is great! it's like single player CCG + tactical d&d style combat

nb i got up to like level 15 or 16 and then quit bc some of the adventures got way too hard/tedious (esp restarting a 5 part adventure for the 4th time bc you can't get past the 5th part)

#38: Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon - 3DS - 21 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/MHzExrL.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Telegraph | Slant | Trailer

In the new 3DS sequel Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, the green-clad Mario brother is pulled back into the ghostbusting business. The ghosts are going haywire, you see. It's up to you round them up. You do this by unloading a charge of your flashlight on ghosts, and then using your trusty Poltergust 5000, a ghostbusting device that straps onto your back, to suck the ghosts up. That's not all you can do with it, though. The Poltergust 5000 has two functions: vacuuming and blowing. Like in the first game, you use these abilities to poke and prod your way through rooms. Who knew so many of the world's problems could be solved with an overpowered vacuum? - Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku

This is just a really cute game that I want to convince lots of people to play. This game looks great and there are so many sweet, thoughtful details in this, like how Luigi hums along to the theme music and how items in a room react when they're near the vacuum. The ghost-sucking physics of the vacuum are pretty satisfying and most of the boss fights are good fun (most -- there's one pretty irritating one). Supposedly the multiplayer is really good but I haven't had a chance to try it. - salsa shark

21 points, you son of a bitch!

haha

Haha I was hoping there'd be at least another voter on that one to mask my awful vote allocation :( SERIOUSLY THOUGH WHY HAS NO ON ELSE PLAYED AND VOTED FOR THIS GAME :(

*NO ONE ELSE :(

Don't feel bad, there are hordes of Luigi's Mansion fans out there... for some reason. I am intrigued though, I hope it's better than the GameCube version.

That screenshot alone looks like ten times more interesting than anything in the original game, for instance

I always want to play all the handheld games in this poll but realistically I can't talk myself into buying a 3DS or a Vita. I have enough stuff.

I never played the Gamecube one so can't comment, but I seem to recall the reviews agreeing that it's much better than the first.

That Dark Moon is better than the first, obviously. I can't type a thought comprehensively today.

#37: Fire Emblem: Awakening - 3DS - 22 pts - 1 votes

http://i.imgur.com/gOQWifk.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Edge | Inside Gaming Daily | Trailer

A fun tactical RPG with good replay value. I've sunk a lot of hours into this one. - diamonddave85

oh man: the new fire emblem is probably the best game released last year in mechanical terms. that requires more explanation but i am saving that for my in-depth gamefaqs mechanics faq. - Lamp

"Fire Emblem Awakening on the other hand is the best in the series & an amazing piece of work, fully deserves all the plaudits its been getting" ... "but wtf with everyone's feet?!?" - Zappi

lamp do you really write gamefaqs faqs? i want to believe

lol zappi

#36: Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective - Browser - 23 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/eRTeWVw.jpg

Game | Polygon | Rock Paper Shotgun | James Turrell | Speed Run

Video games as art, video games about art, video games about bad video games, about taste, art about taste, about mortality, anti-art, anti-taste about anti-art. Consumerism. Hell. - s.clover

Weird Twitter in game form. - reddening

Hahaha.