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  • Best of the Rest: Richard's picks of 2013

    by 
    Richard Mitchell
    Richard Mitchell
    01.03.2014

    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.