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

rebuild looks cool, imma get that shit on my kindle

pretty sure Plague Inc was my #1 (can't remember! def voted for it) & I'm shocked I'm the only vote for it! I think you'll all dig it; you get to kill the whole world, which seems in touch with general ILX 'tudes

i killed the world once or twice on easy. there wasn't anything pushing me to ratchet up the skill level too much higher and keep exploring the game.

^ that mostly. I think it (and rebuild) would be on a top 20 ballot but I thought there were 10 games better than both this year

I like games with real world maps (would love an ios port of Shadow President) & the killing dynamic was just a good enough hook for me to keep on going

picked up Infectionator - didn't realize they improved it since the original flash version, cute

i downloaded that simpsons game after somebody recommended it on this thread and after 15 minutes i wanted to kill myself, fuck all games like that forever. such depressing life-wasters.

ABSOLUTELY! (downloads Triple Town)

rebuild made my ballot despite not getting that much more play than plague -- the game itself was so tense and memorable, plus it was fun to keep playing even when i was safe/dominating, and there was enough story that it was interesting to explore the various paths, alternate endings, etc. the quartertothree review really nailed it for me.

well s1ocki i guess i know who isnt getting any springfield valentines to build phineas butterfat's from me in the near future then

oh btw are we all friending each other in the Simpsons game?

look upon my mighty disorganized fake city with no roads connecting stuff and despair

i am jjjusten btw

djperrynomod

who is lubbarlubab, is that someone here?

mordy iirc

yeah that's me

so you all are getting valentines from me right? just want to make sure im doing that right

STOP RUINING THIS THREAD YOU GUYS

oh yeah, tons of valentines everywhere

<3 <3 <3

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#40: SSX – X360, PS3 – 15 pts – 3 votes

http://86bb71d19d3bcb79effc-d9e6924a0395cb1b5b9f03b7640d26eb.r91.cf1.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ssx-2012-walkthrough-cover.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/files/2012/08/ssx.jpg

Quarter to Three

Dev Interview

http://thecontrolleronline.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SSX-Race-It.jpg

T/S: SSX vs SSX Tricky vs SSX3 vs SSX whatever!

i voted for that!

That SSX GIF is killer! Nicely done, Z S.

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#39: Dear Esther – PC – 16 pts – 1 vote - 1 top game votes

http://www.pageofreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/Dear-Esther1.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/a_c/2012-02-13_00004.png

Brainy Gamer: Dear Eisenstein

PopMatters - Isolation in Gaming

Postmortem

The Thin Play of Dear Esther

”Speedrun”

Nightmare Mode: The Wonderful Accessibility of Dear Esther

Dear Esteban

Soundtrack

http://www.primagames.com/media/images/games/hub/hero/dear-esther.jpg

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#38: Hotline Miami – PC – 16 pts – 3 votes

http://gamingirresponsibly.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Hotline-Miami-Logo-Small.png

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://thecontrolleronline.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Hotline-Miami.jpg

Errant Signal

Zero Punctuation

Wreck-It Richard

Dev Interview

Soundtrack

http://25.media.tumblr.com/f125fa78bbab68f320e8a8cb10880917/tumblr_meoxcscnY51qbqo3ao1_1280.jpg

WillM: The flip side of the Fez coin. I didn't get too far, like Fez. I didn't quite love the gameplay. I thought the overt story bits were so super hokey. But there was something about the feel of it. Again, probably the music and the visuals and the pacing of the whole thing. the whole game feels like the sticky floor of a movie theatre. Kind of gross, kind of foreign, best not to think about it too much.

#37: Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward – 3DS – 18 pts – 2 votes - Top 3DS Game

http://www.technologytell.com/gaming/files/2012/11/zero-escape-virtues-last-reward-e1352227187810.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://cdn.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zero-Escape-Virtues-Last-Reward_2012_10-22-12_003.jpg_600.jpg

Quarter to Three

Dev Interview

YouTube Soundtrack Playlist

”Why ZE:VLR should be Game of the Year”

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/8/85333/2361540-zero_escape_vol._2__virtue_s_last_reward__17_.jpg

if: I loved 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors. The sequel most importantly keeps the general sadistic Crystal Maze approach, and also removes most of the annoyances in mechanics terms, has some particularly clever puzzles and ups the scale and complexity of the story to this amazing meta thing with hilarious/stunning twists everywhere. The prose is still overwrought but when you don't have to read it several times it doesn't seem a bit issue All of which makes it all the more annoying in the few occasions where it also takes the dubious innuendo/character design that infected the first game in places and puts much more uncomfortable needless sexism into the mouth of the first person main character.

lamp: In the movies of my childhood the heroes
after skilled swordplay and moral victories
leave with absolutely nothing
to do for the rest of their lives

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#33 (Tie): Motorstorm: RC – PSVita – 20 pts - 1 vote - Top PSVita Game

http://beefjack.com/files/2012/02/motorstorm-RC-review.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://roxarmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/motorstorm-rc-vita1.jpg

Dev Interview

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7ocDzS84eRg/T1gBJDzhcFI/AAAAAAAAEwg/Z_YaMfatzf8/s1600/MotorstormRC2.jpg

JCL: Top-down, remote control car racer with tons of content and challenge. For some reason, I feel like this game has been over-looked, but damn, it’s really good. If only it had online multiplayer, it could have been perfect.

http://i.imgur.com/iJ8gDd9.gif
#33 (Tie): Sine Mora – PSN, XBLA – 20 pts - 1 vote

http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/224060-review-sine-mora/SM_screenshot_3-620x.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://www.onlysp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Sine_Mora.jpg

Quarter to Three

YouTube Soundtrack Playlist

http://cdnl.complex.com/m.php/CHANNEL_IMAGES/VIDEO_GAMES/2012/06/the-top-25-video-games-of-2012-so-far/sine_mora_new_screenshot_010_270369.jpg

JCL: Probably the best looking STG ever. The soundtrack, by Akira Yamaoka, is wonderful. Also just a really solid game.

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#33 (Tie): Star Wars: The Old Republic – PC – 20 pts - 1 vote

http://www.universostarwars.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/star-wars-the-old-republic-gameplay.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m4DAgQcR7ns/TvCCYh651_I/AAAAAAAAAd4/BBFOdw2dUTw/s1600/Star+Wars+Old+Republic+gameplay.jpg

How I Got Through SW:TOR

Zero Punctuation

Gamasutra: The Burning of SW: TOR

Darth Hater

Late 2012 Dev Interview

Soundtrack

Dev Blogs

Tanking the Old Republic

http://www.gamersbliss.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Legacy-Update-Tauntaun-Pet-600x300.png

Zora: I know this has been out a while, but you said MMOs were ok, and I only started playing it in 2012. What can I say about it? It's an MMO, it's star wars, it's exactly what you'd expect, but... just a little better. Well written, well voiced, nicely balanced. The PvP lets it down something fierce, because it all takes place in instanced scenarios, and they are really, really well designed but there's only so many of them, so it suffers from that paintball problem all instanced PvP is subject to. Coming from years of open-world PvP in Dark Age of Camelot and EVE Online, the instances are repetitive, frenetic, and ultimately feel a bit silly. Think of this as a multiplayer adventure game, however, and it's not going to disappoint.

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#33 (Tie): Unchained Blades – PSP – 20 pts - 1 vote - Top PSP Game

http://gamingbolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/UnchainedBladesSlider.jpg

Official Game Site

Metacritic

Gameplay Video

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2013/01/ucb.jpg

Dev Interview

YouTube Soundtrack Playlist

XSEED Blog - How To Do What You Love (If Your Love Is Nerdy and Awesome)

XSEED in 2013

http://www.gameplox.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/unchained-blades1.jpg

lamp: so much depends
upon
the way you
level

so basically this list is making me feel bad about how few games i played this year.

u totally wasted your life not playing games dude

Amazed that nobody else gave Dear Esther a vote! Best thing I played all year. By dropping everything else gamey and just letting itself be a journey through a landscape, it really achieved what in truth I think lots of games aim for but then fall short of, because they then trip up over their own combat or menus or levelling or whatever - it felt a real visit to a real place.

I really enjoyed the writing and voice acting and experimental story structure too. But they all felt secondary to that sense of place.

xp they're all out there and readily available and MUCH CHEAPER now, so rejoice!

it was a pretty solid year, more than i realized, as i often feel during these yearly recaps

JCL votes in character, nice

SSX was a lot of fun, and didn't overstay its welcome. wish it had a better soundtrack, better multiplayer and a little more variance in the levels, but i really appreciate what was there for a "fresh" start

I would've rated Hotline Miami higher if I'd played a little more before voting, it's fucking great btw. i mean really great, easily on par with the best stuff I played this year. deserves to be a LOT higher in this list.

recommended review: http://hardcoregaming101.net/hotlinemiami/hotlinemiami.htm

haha forx did you just link a couple of random XSEED-related blog posts in the 'unchained blades' entry??

seemed appropriate. i like what they do but it's all of one color, isn't it?

i think theres probably a greater aesthetic/cultural consistency than there is in gameplay

Infectonator and Rebuild are ace.

I've just installed Super Monsters Ate My Condo on my iPod, but it looks like the sort of thing I'll enjoy for a while despite being absolutely shit at it, then give up in the not-so-distant future. I can't even imagine how you guys are getting such high scores.

Dear Esther looks AMAZING and right up my alley, I might spend some of my birthday money on it.

Sine Mora OMG I waaaant it
I always forget about 2D space shooters and then they appear

emil.y: Super MAMC is all about appropriate boost selection once you've unlocked all of them. There are a few that look like they will be indispensable at first that turn out to be kind of terrible and others whose possibilities explode once you start using the monsters' powers more effectively. Scoring high in the game is all dependent upon extending the gameplay time and raising your multiplier; once you unlock enough of the starting boosts where you can begin focusing on that (and making chain combos) you'll find it very hard to score less than a billion points in a game.

For example, a strategy I like is choosing the "double pink condo" boost, where every time, pig and multiplier condo you create for the first 15 seconds creates a double and then creating and feeding bronzes and silvers to the blue monster, who doubles the value of all pink condos matched, right at the beginning of the game. If you can get your matches right and you are lucky with chains, you can end up with 5 minutes of time on the clock and a multiplier that's pushing 300 after the first 15 seconds of play. If you can then balance between making matches with time condos while blue's power is active and activating yellow before going into Megazone, you will find that every time you launch Megazone you can rack up over a billion points. Then it becomes a game of "how long can I keep this going" wrt combos and keeping blue active as long as possible.

xxp yeah, that's what i mean by color i guess

My high is 376 million. And I thought I was doing good.

I've settled on using the peace, long combo and double pink boosts as my go-tos; I think if I swapped out the peace boost for either the dog or the cat I could probably take my baseline score up to the next level

also I play this game compulsively

how do you "afford" to use the boosts though? seems like you'd only be able to use them once every few games, and the rest of the time save up money

My money management strategy for the first 30 "levels" of the game was to only use the peace boost and to avoid events until I had over 10,000 gold; then I added another cheap boost and kept playing until I could reliably make 1000 gold per game, at which point I added a third cheap boost. I would also take whatever free boost I won on the wheel.

So, for a while until I built up my bank, I only played with peace, yellow, and +10 multiplier and would regularly end the game with 1000+ gold, which when added to the incidental gold you make during the game and the bonus gold you can win on the wheel, meant that I was always coming out positive in the coins. I recently switched to long combo/peace/double pink, which is 2000 gold, and have been reliably scoring 1800-2100 gold at the end of the game which has kept me at about the break even point while I work on figuring out how to get to the trillion mark. If I get too low in funds due to a string of bad games, I just go back down to the peace boost and play some games to get my bank back up.

in mamc i always am held back by not wanting to feed my bronze/silver/gold/etc to the monsters because i want to build more of them

its like i kinda keep refusing to play it correctly

haha yeah, I understand that; the realization that I could make more points by feeding bronzes to blue rather than hoarding them was a long time coming, mostly because in the original MAMC blue was useless except for in very specific situations where I was likely to not even have him swapped in