Top 10 games of 2013

I made similar thread last year and my love for lists hasn't diminished since.
So what where your favorite games last year and why?
Unfortunately like last year there is no RPG in my top 2 games this year either.

1.Bioshock infinite:Once I finished this game I knew it would probably be my GotY.Story and voice acting where stellar and Columbia, while not Rapture, was very interesting and atmospheric place.There also has been large improvement in gamplay itself and it's far better than in previous games.This is one of my favorite games overall.

2.Europa Universalis IV:EU III and CK II where my favorite startegies overall, they are now dethroned by EU IV, while my initial impressions where mixed as games gone along it became my favorite game that come out of paradox interactive.

3.Expeditions conquistador:My RPG of the year.Solid writing,C&C, good turn based combat with unique arena for each fight.While not stellar this was good game in every way.

4.Paper sorcerer:To be honest I don't know why I liked this game so much, while I play them I am not that big fan of wizardry like games, but this dungeon cravler win me over with solid writing, challenging combat system and unique art style.

5.Dragon commander:RTS part definitively wasn't best but it was good enough, sot to spoil rest of game which was excellent.Larian writing at it it's best.

6.Antichamber:This is puzzler without any story left strong impression on me because of very good and unusual design of world and puzzles.Definitively interesting experience.

7.Space rangers HD:This game isn't higher on my list because it's only HD remake with expansion scale additions.Game is just as good as I remember it.

8.Path of exile:While I have mixed feelings, one of best skill trees and good itemization made this game worthwhile experience.

9.Stanley parable:While not game in traditional sense it's clever writing left strong impression on me.

10.Thomas was alone:This game actually came out at end of 2012 but I am going to cheat and put it on list since I played it at beginning of this year.This is puzzle platformer with witty writing and narrator that did marvelous job.

We all expected lot better year for RPGs but nearly all of most anticipated RPGs got delayed.Well better luck next year

I like #3, too. Not perfect but entertaining and a new non fantasy setting.

Good to hear your opinions on #1. I have bioshock:inifinite on my backlog waiting in my steam library.

I used to play more paradox games (EU II, III and HOI2) than any other game (except moo2) but havent touched them for a couple of years (with toddlers around I had not enough sleep and concentration to forge a swedish empire in the baltic...)

But Im slowly warming to the thought of buying EU IV, nice to hear about it.

C

I agree with your number one

When I was putting this list together I was very surprised by how many strategy titles came out this year that I enjoyed and the lack of RPGs that I considered for this list. Hoping with all the Kickstarters due out soon next year's list will look different.

1) XCOM: Enemy Within - New maps, new missions, new weapons and class types. Made a game I already enjoyed much better. Still gets easy towards the end game but felt like it took longer to hit that point.

2) Reus - More of a puzzle/strategy game than a god game imo. Simple yet complex, was glad I rolled the dice on it during a sale.

3) Rogue Legacy - Not a fan of rogue likes but this rogue lite was great. Rather than a death being a restart, every death is actually progress. You keep whatever plans & gold you made with the last character and use it to make the game a bit easier for the next character. The wide variety of classes, spells, and traits helped to minimize some repetitiveness.

4) Don't Starve - Kind of hard for me to dump tons of time into due to the lack of structure but I still love the game. Deaths earning points to unlock other characters is kind of fun and the ease of modding on Steam's workshop, not to mention array of mods, made this tons of fun for me.

5) State of Decay - Survivial, perma death, and GTA kind of world. While it wasn't everything I was hoping for, I've still enjoyed it. Picked up the DLC recently but haven't tried it yet. The developer blog discussing it made it sound amazing though, hoping it wasn't just a great job by marketing.

6) Path of Exile - It does a lot of things well and their F2P model should really be the shining example to other developers of how to approach it. There's an unheard of amount of customization through the huge skill tree and plethora of gems. Wasn't a fan of their loot system in groups (which I know they've since added an option to fix) or the endgame but a very nice edition to the genre.

7) Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes - Much preferred Fallen Enchantress as LH is streamlined in comparison but there series is second only to Civ for time invested in 4X games for me.

8) The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Probably would have wound up higher if I had bought the GotY edition. The original was short and the vanilla trees didn't inspire a second play through. The end game stuff didn't do anything for me either.

9) Gunpoint - great little game but insanely short and expensive by my $ per hour matrix. There were some very well crafted levels and it does have 2 stories, I just hardly ever replay games. I remember the developer talking about wanting to add Steam Workshop for user content before but it hasn't happened yet.

10) Shadowrun Returns - Landed on the border of decent/good for me. I don't really care about exploration so the maps didn't bother me much but I do wish the story had been less linear, had C&C, all hirelings had personality, and there were more sidequests. I poked around a little in some user made stuff and some of it was pretty good. Curious to see how they handled the Berlin expansion.

Honorable Mention: Mars: War Logs

2013 was a pretty weak year in gaming imo. At least in the genres that I enjoy the most. I spent more time playing games from previous years.

The fact that Bioshock Infinite might have been the best game speaks volumes.

if CK2 came out this year then that would be my #1, if not, EU4. After that, maybe Guild Wars 2, which was highly fun for 3 to 6 weeks. Expeditions Conquistador was ok, I liked Shadowrun Returns better. I think that's about it for me.

Well, I found Bioshock Infinite to be good enough to compete for best game any year. Not for the actual gameplay, though, but for the combined experience - which still lingers with me.

If we were breaking this down into categories, I'd agree it could compete for best story/plot. I'm more of a gameplay guy though which is probably why I wasn't as blown away by BI as some were.

It certainly wasn't anything special in the gameplay department - I agree, but I had low expectations after Bioshock - which probably helped. I still think it was pretty good for a straight-up shooter, but that's because I like large open areas and an emphasis on exploring every nook and cranny.

I guess I'm an "experience" guy, which means that the combination of things that make up a great game, for me, will depend on the actual game. Some games don't have much in the way of immersion and story - so the gameplay will have to compensate. X-Com, for example, is a game where the gameplay and mechanics mean much more to me than the story.

Incidentally, I think X-Com: Enemy Within was a great expansion exactly because it primarily built upon the strengths of the base game.

If we were voting, I'd pick Mars: War Logs or Expeditions: Conquistador. Neither of those two is a GOTY material by today's standards being far from AAA game. But both are rare gems out there that are no grinders and didn't use the modern milking fraud of spamming endless amount of DLC usually called "season pass".

Van Helsing is honorable mention as it's DLC is unlike other scam-o-ramas utterly cheap. But since it still exists… No goty vote from me.

Seeing these lists reminds me of what a bad year 2013 was for RPGs. Luckily, 2014 looks very promising.

At any rate, Dragon Commander is probably the only new game I really enjoyed in 2013. Beyond that, BG2: EE and Dragonborn for Skyrim are both worth mentioning, but they're hardly new games.

Spent most of my year with skyrim and the witcher. Did play tomb raider also but only for a few hours and for what ever reason haven't gotten back to it.

I know it's blasphemy but I'm actually enjoying Battlefield 4 single player right now. Mostly for the graphics, sound and destructible environments. Hopefully i'll finish as the game is pretty short but these games don't usually hold my interest very long either.

The only game released this year that I've put any significant time in to is Blackguards but I guess technically it's not released yet.

So sadly, I couldn't even list 10 top games this year.

This was a sad year for gaming. I almost have to look at save directories to remember what I played. Outside of mostly forgettable indie games: Legend of Dawn, Inquisitor, Blade of Destiny remake, Blackguards, etc, I ended up replaying games of yesteryear. I replayed all the recent Bethesda titles and spent a lot of quality time with Kult also.

I also lost 3 family members, so I'm ready for 2013 to just go away.

I've continued to throw time down the hole that is DDO. Somehow, the grind hasn't gotten to me yet, even as I approach 4 years with it. Probably has something to do with the group of nutjobs I play with.

Most of my "other" time went to dabbling with older titles. I took a swing at Grimrock and had good fun but never finished. I got the chance to get involved with the Might and Magic 10 preview thru the Watch and very much enjoyed that one, even in its early, unpolished state. A little Plants vs Zombies, Majesty, and Wiz8 pretty well completes my 2013 dance card. Kinda sad, really, and doesn't make for much of a Top 10 list.

My parents ponied up a new rig for me, so I'm now able to play some new games I've been eyeballing for a long while. We'll see how that goes in 2014. Bioshock3 and XCom, I'm looking at you, boys.

very weak year for gaming, what ive enjoyed most last year tomb raider, remember me, how to survive, expeditions conquistador, juarez gunslinger, omerta, demonicon, dmc, shadow warrior and thats it
this year however seems to be fantastic, at least 10 megarpgs will come out

No beta, Early Access in the list.

A - The marking points of the year
The bless of the year: The confirmed come back of turn based.
The curse of the year: The avalanche of Early Access/Beta/Alpha "release".
The game genre of the year: Strategy Turn Based.
The platform of the year: Mac OSX with the best gaming year of all Mac history, and 2014 will probably be even be better, particularly with my future new Mac Pro (after 8 good years of use of my current computer).

B - My top ten the year
1: XCOM Enemy Within: There's definitely design approach I don't like in this series as not have a research and build tree. But I can't deny it works anyway and it's big fun, and this extension is a huge improvement of the original, I mean EU.

2: Eldritch: Huge surprise of the end of year, I admit I played it only at beginning of 2014 but it's still a 2013 release. Very very fun light Roguelike stealth FPS. I didn't played it fully Roguelike, in my opinion its random isn't enough high and diversified to justified it, so I made myself intermediate savepoints and between them played it Roguelike.

3: Battle World Kronos: For me a fantastic revival of Battle Isle series, loved it despite some flaws like the story/story telling but that's quite minor in such game. Yeah and I don't care of the lack of any skirmish mode but I can understand it's different for some other players.

4: Endless Space Disharmony: The original game was already a great 4X very fun with a great satisfying mood of Soap Opera. The extension change and develop the core game for a new version in my opinion much better including for the AI but there's controversy about that. The game as exploits and not all mechanisms are well balanced nor the factions are on par. But it's still a huge fun for the 4X with the closest spirit to Civilization without to be a pale clone but instead with many originality. A side note is it's in my opinion a showcase of future in UI design even if not everything is perfect in that area.

5: Game Dev Tycoon: A game sort of casual but with some depth. It's definitely inspired from a PC game released in 1997 and ported on ios in 2010 ie Game Dev Story. But the point is GDT succeed add many more features and more depth. The big fun is a bit an illusion but it works, it's to play and dream around game design, game com, game developing, that's its subject that makes it a big fun.

6: Shadowrun Returns: Too many controversy about it here, I won't explain why it's in this position.

7: Dominions 4: A weird and deep 4X game with influences from wargames, Master of Magic/Age of Wonders, and Civilization. Perhaps it would have been in my top 1 to 3 if I hadn't tried the MP. Alas MP break the charm of the SP because it pinpoints how the AI is unable to use many important features. It's still very fun in SP but it's not the "real" game. And for MP, the heavy importance of diplomacy, the games that last multiple months and managed by some admin, it's not for me, otherwise I would perhaps put it top 1 because the MP is rather deep and complex.

8: Avadon 2 The Corruption: Solid RPG in right line of Avadon 1, for some personal reason I haven't yet finished it, but beside first parts that didn't appeal me, it grew in efficiency and fun as I progressed in the game. Overall the companions writing is perhaps a bit improved and there's a clear effort to make bigger area than in the 1, with the flat that sometimes it's at price of some density gameplay dilution. In my opinion it's solid fun but in an ideal world the series need work more on puzzles/secrets/tricks diversity and assets, and improve even more the writing and companions managements, living and writing.

9: The Bureau XCOM Declassified: For now I only played a part of this game, firstly because of the later Mac release secondly because the Mac release has still problems to save your custom controls setup. But from some hours played I enjoyed quite a lot this implementation of Tactical Shooter. You better need enjoy pause a lot action games to enjoy this one, but it's not a problem for me. And it's far to be exempt of flaws including some linearity in the progression, but it's definitely a sort of Tactical Shooter as could be Tactical RPG. The core of the gameplay is the Tactical thing, not much the exploration or any RPG/Adventure elements.

10: Bionic Dues: Quite fascinating game with light Roguelike elements, but rather interesting tactical combats. On the long run the game suffer a bit of pushing you into developing some elements of your teams, this pushing you to use only a subset of features and tricks to manage almost all situations. This dynamic is leading you to restrict the tactical value and diversity as your play progress. It's still a captivating tactical game with in interesting characters team management. The second release in that series, could eventually fix the main problem and deliver a huge original classic, something this release isn't yet but very fun game anyway.

As a side note, for various reasons, mainly a computer glued to XP and OSX Lion, but not only, there's few games that definitely could be in my 2013 top 10, but I didn't found the time/opportunity to play them:
- Civilization V with Brave New World
- Plants vs. Zombies 2
- Bioshock Infinity
- Desktop Dungeons
- Might & Magic Heroes VI: Shades of Darkness
- Metro Last Light
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Tomb Raider

C - My personal major point of the year
For me 2013 is a lot a marking year because of two points, as I mentioned previously, a huge Mac gaming year, now sticked on Mac side more than one year.

But even more marking was a series of play of past games I hadn't played or not much or not since a very long time, in a rough order of their shock power:
- Dominions 3
- Doom 3
- System Shock 2
- Might & Magic 3
- Age Of Wonders
- Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition
- Heroes of Might & Magic V
- The Lord of the Rings: War In The North
- Prey

I'm not going to put them in any order, I'll just make a list of some of the games from last year that really stand out:

Shadowrun Returns. While a bit on the short side, and very linear, the core system is very good. I enjoyed the combat, I enjoyed the character development, and I really enjoyed the fact that the game has a strong editor, which means that there are now plenty of user-made campaigns, which add up to quite a lot of game for my money.

Europa Universalis IV: EU 4 is in many ways an improvement over EU 3. It has a more transparent rule system, which makes it a lot easier to make informed decisions, and they also seem to have improved the AI. The 3 resources for government, diplomacy & military might seem like an odd way to handle things, but they do give you a lot more strategic choices than the old system. Colonization feels more natural, as does dealing with provinces that you've taken through armed conflict. If you intend to play an east Asian nation, then EU3 (with all its expansions) feels better, but EU4 is better for the European nations.

Dominions 4 I got this one just recently, but as it is so similar to Dom 3, I feel like I can still give my opinion on it. Dom 4 takes most of what works in Dom 3, but also rebalances some of the things that did not work (magic could, for an example, get out of hand in Dom 3). Also, the interface is better, and the game gives you more choices in how to design your army, so overall, it's an improvement on an already very good game.

Rogue Legacy I'm actually slightly disappointed with this one, it could really have used some more content, but what's there is good. It's basically a metroidvania meets Spelunky, and it works. Most of the enemies were fun to fight, the bosses were a good test of skill, and it really made you feel like you were getting stronger with each run, which in turn gave a good sense of progression. But it could have used at least one more area, preferably 2-3 more.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes: A really good Master of Magic-like game, with a good level of depth. Took me a while to adapt to the fact that expanding fast is not always the best idea, but once I got the hang of that, it was really fun to play.

Papo & Yo came as a bit of a surprise to me. It looks like a lighthearted adventure game with a big friendly monster, but it's actually a surprisingly dark game, filled with relaeteable symbolism. The game is beautiful, the soundtrack fits really well, and as the game progressed, I could really feel what the main character was going through.




Games from last year that I have, and which would probably fit the list, if only I would have played them:
Wargame: Airland battle
Paper sorcerer (kickstarter backer, I really should get around to play this one, it looks quite good)
Expeditions conquistador




Games which I played last year, but which I feel are not quite worthy of a top 10 list, but still notable enough to mention:
The Stanley parable. No, I did not think it was bad, in fact I quite liked it. It was funny, it was clever and it was interesting. I've played through it several times, and each time I find something new & interesting to discover. But it did not quite have the impact on me as I expected.

Papers, please: I guess the hype is partially to blame for this. Papers, please has been hyped by a lot of people I know, and once I played it, it just could not live up to the expectations that people had created. It was not bad, but it did not get to me the same way it seem to have got to most other people I know.

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol: it's a light turnbased tactical game about airplanes during WW1. The fact that we are dealing with airplanes, which are constantly in motion, forces you to think in slightly different ways than most other tactical games. It was fun, easy to pick up & play, and excellent for when you only have 15-30min to kill. But I doubt it's one of those games I'll think back to in 2 years.



I'll probably update this post at some point.

Well these things are supposed to be games and they are supposed to be released in 2013. Bah. This is what I had the most fun playing this year.

1. Skyrim. I got the Dragonborn and Dawnguard expansions and I'm playing through Dragonborn right now. (I'm really not sure if they should be called DLCs or expansions. They're mighty big for typical DLCs and they are rather small for expansions.) Plus more mods, of course, and improved versions of old mods. Plus lots of content in the original game.

2. Europa Universalis 4. I've still got a lot to learn with this game.

3. Bioshock Infinite: I had some real problems with the game but the ending was just so neat! The game makes a good first impression and a good last impression.

4. Tomb Raider Reboot: This one would have been further down on the list but they did a particularly good job getting 3D Vision working with this game. There are even some scenes that seem designed for 3D players, like walking over rickety bridges while looking down.

5. Borderlands 2: Mighty "shootery" but I still enjoyed it. I really liked Handsome Jack and the story was much improved over Borderlands 1.

6. The Long War mod for XCom: This makes quite a few changes to the original XCom game that really made it a lot more fun for me. It also slowed the pace down by giving you far more battles in a month. I'm kinda wishing they hadn't slowed it down quite as much as they did but the gameplay improvements really were great.

7. X3: Terran Conflict: I finally finished the HUB mission!

8. Far Cry 3: The story was extra dumb and the economics were a joke but trying to silently take over enemy bases was really fun and exploration was pretty good, too.

9. Sword of the Stars 2: They finally got it working decent this year - and with an extra race thrown in to boot.

10. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: All I really did was make rollercoasters but that gave me quite a bit of fun this year.

Crilloan said:

(with toddlers around I had not enough sleep and concentration to forge a swedish empire in the baltic…)

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Zloth said:

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Oh!

Getting dat urge again!
Paint the world blue!

EU IV seems to get rather favourable opinions from players.
i've promised myself to finish some of my games on my backlog before buying any new ones...
But then!

C