When historians look back upon 2013 in terms of gaming...

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Ohh and Metro Last Light is underrated .

Comrade, you should not despair!

Many enjoy Metro Last Light!

Including me, but the story did get a bit loopy towards the end(I preferred it when characters seemed insane, rather than actually psychic or supernatural in some way).

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Maybe we will all just stop procrastinating and all do something worthy to society?

HEY

ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY THAT COMPLAINING ABOUT VIDYAGAEMS ON THE INTERNET IS NOT PRODUCTIVE?

BECAUSE IT SOO IS

 

[Abomination]

Sexism, XBone 180 and GTAV.

Those are the "highlights" of this year.

I guess special mention to this being a great year for Kickstarter FUNDING, if not releases.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

The year the xBone/PS4 came out.

The year the Steambox was announced.

The year GTA 5 came out.

Other then that, there wasn't anything that spectacular. Especially compared to last year's "The Year of Games Shitting on FPSs"

 

[sth1729]

Probably the rise of games being crowd-funded games, as well as this year being remembered as the release year for the last major consoles, with every other iteration from now on probably just being minor adjustments of current consoles. Honestly I can't think of any other thing happening this year that would be remembered by historians. GTA for it's insane sales number and possibly some of the bigger debates about gender portrayals or the misuse of micro-transactions in games. Otherwise not much else noticeable about this year.

 

[Psychobabble]

'The Year Of The Citizen Kane Of Gaming... Again' or something.

Goddamnit! I was people would stop saying that! Fuck Citizen Kane! Why do we need to compare ourselves to a 50+ year old movie? Why don't we instead strive to make a game that films would want to compare themselves to?

It's not really a comparison, just an analogy. Never mind the contents of Citizen Kane, it's about making a game that's as important to every other game as Kane was important to every other film.

Well if that's all it is, we've already had several dozen of those. The earliest of which was back in the 80's, remembering that games ARE NOT films.

Yeah now if we could just get game developers to remember this and actually bring out GAMES instead of their half-assed cheap melodramas.

Not sure how the rest of the world will see this year but for me it was the year that AAA games died in their sleep. Only games I don't regret purchasing this year, Rogue Legacy, Shadowrun Returns, Rise of the Triad, Shadow Warrior, Papers Please, Escape Goat, and Path of Exile.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

They will laugh at the complete cock-up that was the Xbone launch.

Seriously, even those outside the gaming industry consider it a failure.

If we're lucky, we'll remember this as the "the beginning of the end of Microsoft".

2012 and 2013 will be "The times they are a-changin"
A lot of major games for both years have been serious reinvestigations of both form and content.
Spec Ops: The Line mercilessly stripping apart the shooter or The Last of Us taking the rubble that's left and building a game where every design decision is meant to communicate story content primarily rather than having a focus on the overall feeling of play.

In the same way Spec Ops desconstructs AAA shooters, The Last of Us deconstructs post apocalypse/zombie games to an extent.

Spoiler: spoilers

Joel breaks the "tough guy who he lost family" trope by not being a nice guy from the beginning and actually getting over his daughter's death in order to focus on his own survival rather than be a typical broody, emo, tough guy. Most apocalypse and zombie fiction also have a "humanity is actually the bad guy" subtext that The Last of Us goes out of its way to enforce by making people a way bigger threat than a group of infected. The infected are dangerous, but its hard not to flat out hate the human enemies in the game. It also destroys the happy ending where there's still a few good people left who deserve a second chance thanks to a magical anti-zombie cure

I guess all these deconstructions show that the industry has gotten to the point where it actually has decent video game centric story tropes to take apart

 

[kazann]

'The Year Of The Citizen Kane Of Gaming... Again' or something.

Goddamnit! I was people would stop saying that! Fuck Citizen Kane! Why do we need to compare ourselves to a 50+ year old movie? Why don't we instead strive to make a game that films would want to compare themselves to?

It's not really a comparison, just an analogy. Never mind the contents of Citizen Kane, it's about making a game that's as important to every other game as Kane was important to every other film.

Well if that's all it is, we've already had several dozen of those. The earliest of which was back in the 80's, remembering that games ARE NOT films.

Yeah now if we could just get game developers to remember this and actually bring out GAMES instead of their half-assed cheap melodramas.

Not sure how the rest of the world will see this year but for me it was the year that AAA games died in their sleep. Only games I don't regret purchasing this year, Rogue Legacy, Shadowrun Returns, Rise of the Triad, Shadow Warrior, Papers Please, Escape Goat, and Path of Exile.

Speak for yourself, I liked those "half arsed cheap melodramas"

Games have evolved from the days of DOS and now can tell stories, deal with it

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Speak for yourself, I liked those "half arsed cheap melodramas"

Games have evolved from the days of DOS and now can tell stories, deal with it

I just wanted to say thank you x1000. So much pretentious bitching in threads like these and preaching about "real" video games all over the place. There's room to enjoy games like Bioshock, TLoU, Papers Please, Thomas Was Alone, and even CoD. Not liking something that's popular doesn't make you a high class Gourmet of video games

 

[JazzJack2]

Games have evolved from the days of DOS and now can tell stories, deal with it

I hate to tell you this but good stories in video games are hardly a recent invention, in fact comparing games from a decade ago like Planescape, Grim fandango, Kotor 2 etc to recent games Like TLOU or Bioshock Infinite I can only say they have regressed in terms of story.

 

[FPLOON]

'The Year Of The Citizen Kane Of Gaming... Again'

God I hope that we forget that saying as time goes by.

It still sounds a bit patronizing.

Can we start a trend of "The Year of The Breakfast Club of Gaming"?

At least that saying and the still-trending saying are better than saying "The Year of the James Cameron's Titanic of Gaming" or replacing the movie Titanic with Avatar in that particular saying...

OT: [ano]The[r] Year of Movie-feeling Games...
Games that feel like you're playing an interactive movie that could never be turned into an actual movie because it would loose the charm of what made these games as good as they are in 2013... My grandkids would be wondering if I did play any of these games... and that's when the disappointment starts to kick in their eyes as I tell them that I spent 2013 playing all of the games that were never even nominated for 2013's GOTY... (Would Ni No Kuni count as GOTY-nomination material? If it doesn't, then that's a shame...)

 

[Malevolentcafe]

For me, it'll be the year Microsoft tried to screw everyone over the Xbone's bullshit DRM policies.

 

[Matthew Jabour]

I doubt GTA 5 will be what this year is remembered for. Does anyone remember when GTA IV came out? Rockstar isn't done milking the GTA cow. The moment GTA 6 comes out is the moment everyone will forget about GTA V.

 

[Strazdas]

It is a year when sony outdid microsoft, it is a year when we saw nintendo fail to entertain (wii U failure continues), it is the year where we had plenty of great games, but completelyforgot about them becuase the market is so oversaturated that it takes a ME3 level of drama to even be remmebered.
Simply out, we are living in the golden ages.

 

[VanQ]

Considering how average most of the games were and how high the average reviewer scores for them were, it's likely to be remembered as the year that professional games journalists all had their heads lodged so firmly up their own bums that all they could smell was the money and bribes the publishers have been force feeding them the last few years.

There were a few gems this year. None of them were polished enough to deserve the 8, 9 or 10/10s they received.

 

[BQE]

Utterly shite. This being one of the main reasons.........

*Quote*

2013 hasn't done anything for me in terms of gaming, apart fro make me dig harder into the archives of old games to try and find things to tick me over until the current set of devs/suits running the show move on.

The year of games that fucked gameplay in favor of story.

Seriously, most of the games people are listing here have bad to mediocre gameplay (IMO). And don't get me wrong, the stories in these games are fantastic (especially Bioshock Infinite), but it was such a chore to play them. The gameplay, instead of complementing (or weaved with) the story, was something that I had to endure until I could find out what happens next.
P.S. This is, of course, just my opinion. There are quite a few people who are there for the story / characters / environment, etc. and are willing to endure "meh" gameplay for it, but I just can't stand games that do this. I'm here for good gameplay first, a good story can be icing on the cake, but there must first be a cake. That was probably not a great metaphor, but you know what I mean.

Without the slightest bit of condescension implied, I simply can not fathom what it must be like to hold such disdain. I imagine it to be a challenge to maintain a set of standards that preclude you from enjoying most modern offerings.

It certainly begs the question: Which is more valid, the will of the majority determing a game's merit? Or evaluating every single piece according to preestablished notions?

If, for example, most people were to like and enjoy Bioshhock Infinite, Call of Duty, DmC, and what have you, does that in itself validate their merit? I find a commonality between these thoughts and Jim Sterling's Movie Defense Force with regard to enjoyment as validity of merit. Quite a few respondents in posts adhere to the belief that a bad movie is bad, regardless of whether or not people find it enjoyable. If you find flaw within a game based on it's mechanisms, storytelling or some other aspect, is it legitimized by a following that expresses joy?

I may have gone off on a tangent, but I believe this is some decent food for thought.

For me, it'd be a year of change. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Valve made serious waves with their consoles. People were both enamored and exasperated with debates. Debates about women, men, violence, gore, sexism, identity, bigotry, and even validity. Perhaps the West may see a shift in paradigm with regards to the portrayal of specific characters while the East may maintain the status quo and cater to theirs.

'Twas a year of raised eyebrows, condescension and oft times complete overreaction. A year of renewed hope and renewed disappoint with those who supply us our entertainment needs.

Whatever you believe, it will without a doubt be a year to remember.

Armored Core: Verdict Day is kinda hidden gem of year cause they failed in advertising it

As a fan of Armored Core I am gladdened by the fact that effort is still being put into the series. Also as a fan of Armored core I am saddened by the niche nature of the game that shall ever remain niche.

I continue to hope that FromSoftware achieves success.