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Best of the Rest: Ludwig's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq has concluded its selection of last year's best games. Click here to see the complete assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs - until next year! The Wonderful 101 The boundless, ALL-CAPS exuberance of The Wonderful 101 may have been misread by its intended audience. Overseen by Mr. Devil May Cry himself, Hideki Kimaya, this vibrant action game conveys cuteness in its army of stout superheroes, but poses creative and razor-sharp challenges without taking a breath. The game's cartoonish antics and enormous bosses are beyond ridiculous, dwarfing the mechanical cleverness that lies beneath it all. The real novelty lies in drawing shapes and having your heroes congeal into corresponding mega-swords and huge hammers (also: puddings). It becomes a practiced analogue shorthand, not unlike your maneuvers in a fighting game, and the hard-earned rewards satisfy in much the same way.
Best of the Rest: Dave's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Payday 2 We've all thought about stealing something at one time or another. We watch crime movies and Cops; we fantasize about what it'd be like to make off into the night with stacks of cash. Payday 2, for me, is that fantasy realized within the context of a continually surprising, highly replayable video game. It's not just one of my favorite games of 2013 – it's one of my favorite games ever.
Best of the Rest: Alexander's picks of 2013
Joystiq is revealing its 10 favorite games of 2013 throughout the week. Keep reading for more top selections and every writer's personal, impassioned picks in Best of the Rest roundups. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is this year's Far Cry 3, which coincidentally happened to be my top game for Best of the Rest in 2012. Both games launched so late in the year and were saddled with incorrect expectations that it wasn't until folks actually played it en masse that the word on the street began to turn. It turned too late, once again, as is the case with Black Flag, which does feature the same incoherent storytelling that made Assassin's Creed 3 such an abomination, but finds redemption in what AC3 was lacking: a game. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag has that element I define in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood – which up to this point was my favorite installment of the franchise – as ABD (Always Be Doing!). Snap your fingers and there's another thing to grab or stab in Black Flag. Add to that the fuller realization of the sailing mechanics introduced in the previous game and Black Flag is primed to be a full-blown pirate spin-off. Black Flag is Sid Meier's Pirates! for a new generation and I certainly hope this isn't the last we see of it. What hurt Black Flag were the Assassin's Creed tropes, and it would be best for both to sail in separate directions from here.
Best of the Rest: Richard's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Rogue Legacy Rogue Legacy is one of those games that comes out of nowhere. It's a name you see popping up on Twitter. Friends begin mentioning it in conversation. One day, you hop on Steam to download it – just to find out what everyone is talking about. You play for a few minutes. Minutes melt into hours, which soon dissolve into days. Rogue Legacy borrows heavily from my 8- and 16-bit youth, injecting Ghosts N' Goblins sensibilities into a roguelike, action-heavy platformer. In short, it would be hard to target a game more directly at me. The deadly simple but deadly challenging gameplay, combined with and an ever-expanding tree of unlockable abilities and classes, is incredibly enticing (perhaps too enticing). The nail-biting encounters, the devious traps, huge bosses and evil fairy chests are enough to ensnare any old-school player. It certainly ensnared me. I fell for Rogue Legacy, and I fell hard.
Best of the Rest: Jess' picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Skulls of the Shogun I have a pre-existing penchant for human skulls as decoration, so maybe that's why Skulls of the Shogun still resonates so deeply with me, despite it launching way back at the beginning of the year – before GDC, before E3, before Gamescom, before the reveals and launches of two next-gen consoles, before the holiday madness. Through all of that, Skulls of the Shogun remains a purely joyful, fun strategy game, complete with morbid humor, accessible mechanics and a lovely Saturday-morning cartoon style. Developer 17-Bit has a precise hand, and the team's attention to detail and flow makes Skulls of the Shogun sing across platforms: Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Steam and iOS. Skulls of the Shogun started the year off in the right way for me, so it's fitting to give it another nod at the end of 2013. Cheers, skull-chewers.
Best of the Rest: Xav's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Splinter Cell: Blacklist Splinter Cell: Blacklist was my Game of the Year for 2013. It's hard to name another game that offers so many different experiences in one box as Blacklist, and even more arduous to name those that have hit the nail so squarely on the head as Ubisoft Toronto (and others) did with Sam Fisher's latest escapade. For franchise fanatics – of which I am one – Blacklist delivered an explosive concoction of everything: the exemplary action of Conviction, the tense stealth of Chaos Theory, and the sublime multiplayer of Pandora Tomorrow. Though its action-movie storytelling can't compete with the likes of other narrative successes launched this year, Blacklist continually entertains throughout its campaign. Its co-op modes are outstanding and its competitive multiplayer is frantic. It's gorgeous, addictive, and, for all these reasons and more, it's my favorite game of the year.
Best of the Rest: Thomas' picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Pikmin 3 For each day of fruit-harvesting, monster-killing progress I make in Pikmin 3, I burn two or three attempts just mapping out my best possible plan of action on the Gamepad. It's a style of play that I typically move on from pretty quickly, but making off with a hefty batch of resources without more than a few Pikmin dying in the process is so satisfying that it's easy for me to stay with it. It helps that Pikmin 3's world is so interesting to explore, too - guiding Pikmin and their tiny captains through caves, snowy hills and grassy pathways is enjoyable even without discovering new treasures. As inviting as the initial cast is though, crossing paths with the game's creatively stressful brand of wildlife cuts bursts of tension into the task of gathering food. Meeting Pikmin 3's roster of unsettling enemies imposes a sense of vulnerability on me, one I imagine my miniature fleets share while following my lead through larger-than-life environments. Of course, victory feels even better when it involves stomping out populations of nightmarish foes. I've never lasted long when faced with obstacles like those found in Pikmin 3, but its offering of challenge in a creative, intriguing world has kept me invested in daily runs for supplies.
Best of the Rest: Sinan's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon It's still hard to believe that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon exists, and perhaps that's why this standalone expansion is so great. Who'd have thought Ubisoft had it in them to greenlight a Far Cry 3 reskin that traded the 2012 game's colorful jungle and wicked undertones for 1980s neon, Michael Biehn, and dinosaurs shooting lasers out of their eyes? Not only does it provide a wonderfully excessive version of Far Cry 3's open-island action, but with its dumb humor and loving pastiches Blood Dragon crams an impressive number of standout moments into one bite-sized package; this passage of play (spoiler warning!) is without doubt one of my favorite moments from any game in 2013.
Best of the Rest: Earnest's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Pokémon X/Y Nintendo is generally a risk-averse company, but with its most recent Pokémon entries it proves that when the normally predictable gaming giant decides to switch things up, it does so in spectacular fashion. Not content to merely increase the number of Pokémon yet again, Nintendo added proper, full-featured online gameplay to Pokémon X and Y alongside gorgeous, colorful 3D graphics. The basic "gotta catch 'em all" gameplay formula still underlies X and Y, but for the first time since the original generation of Pokémon games, catching a Pikachu in the tall grass is complemented by a feeling of modernity and aesthetics superior to anything the franchise has ever seen. While Nintendo will likely have a very hard time topping the success of X and Y with their inevitable sequels, that's less a knock against the company and more high praise of just how hard Nintendo pushed itself for the franchise's 3DS debut. Whether you're old hat at tossing Pokéballs or just want to add a new vice to your life, Pokémon X and Y are phenomenal games that obsolete everything the series has spawned previously.
Best of the Rest: Mike's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. FIFA 14 Regardless of any indicator that 2013 was a "tune-up" year for EA Canada's ongoing soccer sim series, FIFA 14 arguably remains the best sports gaming has to offer for another year. Retaining the elements of unpredictability with the game's ball physic, introduced in FIFA 13, the developer improved teammate AI and slowed the game's pace to force more deliberate, tactical on-field play. The result couldn't be any clearer in the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, which saw significant improvements graphically, particularly in the crowd's character models. While it may not be a top-ten game of the year, FIFA 14 was easily one of the most enjoyable.
Best of the Rest: Anthony's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. DmC: Devil May Cry No game surprised me more in 2013 than DmC: Devil May Cry. That surprise has absolutely nothing to do with some diehard devotion to Capcom's internally developed quartet of games in the original series either. What surprised me was the fact that Ninja Theory finally made something that lived up to the promise of Enslaved and Heavenly Sword. Both games aimed high in trying to deliver bitchin' action and deeply human tales, but both missed the mark. In DmC, they finally nailed it. Young Dante's fight against the demons is classic coming-of-age stuff. Rushing through Limbo feels like if J.D. Salinger wrote Dead Leaves. The combat, meanwhile, felt meatier than the limp button mashing of Enslaved, but more accessible than ball busters like Devil May Cry 3.
Best of the Rest: Danny's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Dragon's Crown Dragon's Crown is the best thing to happen to the beat-'em-up genre since Castle Crashers. Taking its inspiration from Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons games, Dragon's Crown forges its own identity with satisfying combat, a lengthy quest, and a bottomless well of character customization options. The sheer amount of loot players accrue in Dragon's Crown keeps the experience fresh and compelling even after you've hacked your way through hundreds of owlbears. The game offers a broad selection of playable characters, all of which play very differently and require varying degrees of expertise to master. Online multiplayer is a joy as a result, mixing the game's varied cast for some gloriously chaotic battles. It's worth noting that Dragon's Crown has seen a number of significant improvements since its initial release, as patches have consistently addressed player feedback while adding major gameplay features. The newest patch, for instance, gives hardcore players the option of skipping the game's introductory chapters, making character leveling more efficient than ever before. Oh, and it also adds a 10,000-floor dungeon. If you love beat-'em-ups, Dragon's Crown will keep you satisfied for months.
Best of the Rest: Susan's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Puppeteer Come one, come all, to hear the remarkable tale of Kutaro and the magical scissors, Calibrus! Come, see the evil Moon Bear King as he tries to cast the world into nonstop darkness! Come, see his 12 generals steal the power of the Moon Goddess! And see young Kutaro ... basically get mixed up in the whole thing by accident. Wrong place, wrong time, delicious-looking head. You know how it goes. Puppeteer commits to its puppet show aesthetic with gusto, crafting every character, object and bit of scenery out of paper, wood, string, or fabric. The narrator provides the exposition with the nuanced delivery of someone who's attended one too many acting classes, and the cast does their best to remember their lines while the audience murmurs in appreciation. The entire setup is bonkers, keeping its tongue placed firmly in its cheek as you cut down the Moon Stone-hoarding generals one by one and eventually square off against the rotund MBK himself. With sly writing, a spectacular soundtrack and gorgeously detailed locations that include neatly manicured gardens, a Halloweentown, a swamp and outer space, Puppeteer is a gaming experience to savor, rather than rush. Of course, it will take multiple run-throughs to find all of the collectible puppet heads, so you'll have more than enough opportunity to catch every joke and notice every secret. As a PS3 exclusive at the end of that console's cycle, Puppeteer didn't get nearly as much attention as it deserved, but this is a real gem. Hunt it down and play it. Your audience awaits.
