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11. FTL
My indie darling pick of the year, FTL is a an addicting "roguelike" space game where you're trying to guide a ship across the galaxy with evil forces in pursuit, while everything that can possibly go wrong does. You'll have to manage your crew, upgrade your ship, scavenge for supplies, and fight ruthless enemies to have a chance to survive. And even then you'll probably die, as you never know what's lurking in the next star system. It's tough, but that's the nature of this genre - but it succeeds in always drawing you back for another run. Bonus: awesome soundtrack.
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It wouldn't be my list without at least one obscure Japanese RPG. I tend to hate crafting in games, so I'm not sure why I thought I'd like an RPG that's focused on crafting, to the point that it even dictates character growth. But the system held my interest throughout, so this game gets high marks for pulling that off. The battle system is also just different enough from standard JRPG fare to be interesting, and it delivers great boss fights alongside easily skippable regular encounters.
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Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine created one of the best 3D platforming games that doesn't have Mario attached to it. Psychonauts features snappy writing, colorful characters, and insanely creative and diverse level design. Among the highlights for me were the level depicting a suburban neighborhood warped by MC Escher and populated by mysterious, conspiratorial agents, and the stage where you play a wargame against Napoleon. It gets some points knocked off for the near-impossibility of the final Meat Circus level, at least for me. Damn you, Meat Circus!!!
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8. Darksiders
I would never be so crazy as to argue that this Zelda clone is a better game than the 3D Zeldas - but it's possible I enjoyed it more. I love the theme of playing as War (of apocalyptic horseman fame) fighting both demons and angels across the scorched ruins of modern Earth to figure out why he was framed for triggering Armageddon. The combat hits hard, the environments are interesting and the puzzles are fun without being too frustrating. Plus Mark Hamill makes a voice-acting appearance (and not the only time on this list...).
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Alan Wake wears its influences like the patches on the titular character's tweed jacket - Stephen King, Twin Peaks, the Twilight Zone, and atmospheric third-person shooters like developer Remedy's own Max Payne series. Combining this effectively without feeling like a ripoff, Alan Wake tells the story of a writer caught up in a horror story of his own creation. It utilizes a unique combat mechanic in which you must shine your trusty flashlight on the darkly tainted enemies to make them vulnerable to your conventional guns. The result is super tense combat that portrays Alan as a regular dude struggling for survival instead of a badass space marine or whatever. The final chapter drug on a bit too long, but the otherwise effective storytelling kept me wanting to discover what would happen next in the twisted town of Bright Falls.
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6. Dead Island
My guilty pleasure of the year. This game has its issues, but I sure did enjoy crushing some zombie skulls with my baseball bats and hammers. Dead Island is an open-world RPG-ish zombie-killing game set in a tropical paradise - a fairly unique setting for the theme that earns it a lot of points. You run around helping people out, finding new gear, and upgrading your character - all the while engaging in first-person combat against several types of zombies, which I found generally tense and rewarding - though it could get a bit frustrating and monotonous at times. The slower pace and ability to aim for different body parts to debilitate the zombies makes the combat more interesting and tactical than other first-person melee affairs, and the scarcity of ammo for guns seems more realistic for the setting and situation. Dare I say I enjoyed Dead Island more than the frantic chaos of Left 4 Dead? Yes, I dare.
5. Batman: Arkham Asylum
Yes, I finally got around to playing this acclaimed Batman game. All the praise was worth it, as Arkham Asylum is arguably the best Batman game ever created, combining a great story set in the moody atmosphere of the asylum with gameplay that really makes you feel as if you're the Dark Knight. With Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill returning from the animated series to voice the Bat and the Joker respectively, the game has a great deal of authenticity, bolstered by all the background info you can discover about the asylum and its denizens. The combat system is fun while staying true to Batman's character (no guns), the detective mode effectively plays up that aspect of the Caped Crusader's persona, and there's just enough stealth for someone like me - who hates stealth games - to be able to pull off sneak attacks and feel like a total badass doing it.
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4. The Walking Dead
I've only seen the pilot of the Walking Dead TV show and have never read the comics. Moreover, I tend to shy away from adventure games. So how could I possibly enjoy both in one package? Well, take some of the best storytelling in the Walking Dead universe (from what I've heard) and combine it with some of the best aspects of great Western RPGs - character interactions with diverse choices and meaningful consequences - and mostly leave out the obtuse puzzle-solving that drags down adventure games for me. That'll do the trick. TellTale's opus tells an engrossing story where there are no good options and whatever you do will make you feel like a horrible person - and yet you'll keep coming back, because you can't leave Clementine to face the horrors of the zombie apocalypse by herself. Some save bugs and finicky active gameplay moments hold it back just a bit, but here's hoping those are addressed in the new season of this tale.
Before I reveal the top three, let me just say they are all incredibly strong games - any of them could have been number one had I played them in different years. But, I have to make the hard choices, so without further ado...
Definitely among the greatest revivals of a classic franchise, XCOM takes the intense tactical gameplay of this series and updates it for a modern audience, without sacrificing any of the challenge that made the originals great (but probably too rough for me). Brought to you by Firaxis of Civilization series fame, XCOM places you as the commander of an international team tasked with fighting back a relentless alien invasion, both through strategically building up your base and - the main draw - taking on the menace in squad-level turn-based battles along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics. The ability to customize your soldiers to name them after your friends and then honor their glorious, sacrificial deaths was a real treat. XCOM deservedly brought many new fans into this strategy genre with its accessibility and addictiveness, and I'm looking forward to delving into the expansion, Enemy Within, to discover what new horrors the aliens have brought to the fight.
XCOM also wins my award for Best Original Game Music Track of the year, for this blood-pumping song that plays when prepping your soldiers for a mission that may very well be their last:
2. Mass Effect 3
I think it was to my benefit to wait almost a year to play through the final chapter of BioWare's space opera, as I missed the fracas that surrounded the game's original ending and only experienced the "final" version. For me, it was a fitting ending to Commander Shepard's saga and effectively culminated one of my favorite series in video games or perhaps any medium. The combat was still fun, ancillary parts were streamlined without feeling dumbed down, and every beloved character got their moment in the spotlight to wrap up their tale (my apologies to Tali - I swear I didn't know you were going to throw yourself off that cliff when I accidentally ordered genocide against your people). I'm glad Shepard's story was brought to a great (and definitive) conclusion, but the Mass Effect universe is so rich with interesting lore that I hope BioWare has some other awesome ideas for it up their sleeve.1. Bioshock Infinite
"There's always a lighthouse, a man, a city."
Anyone that knows me at all should know this would be number one. The original Bioshock created one of the most interesting worlds in video game history in the underwater city of Rapture. Irrational Games' long-awaited follow-up equally delivers, in crafting the floating city of Columbia in 1912 - a city where its founder, Zachary Comstock - haunted by his experiences at Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion - has taken the ideas of (white) American exceptionalism to their most revolting extreme. It is a city where Washington is blindly worshiped as a god, John Wilkes Booth is revered as a hero, and interracial couples are stoned at fairs. Into this colorful nightmare steps Booker DeWitt, who only knows that he must "rescue the girl to pay the debt." The girl in question is Elizabeth, one of the best realized characters in gaming, who accompanies Booker through your first-person shooting adventure in Columbia. The combat is fun and intense, with strategically-placed skylines enabling you to zip around like a one-man armed rollercoaster. But the setting and characters are the real stars - from Comstock and the other "Founders" to the faction fighting against him, who are certainly no saints - raising the question of how far you should go to fight oppression. Questions of inter-dimensional travel threaten to overly complicate things, but the story builds to an incredible ending that effectively wraps things up. It's just an unforgettable experience.
Additionally, Bioshock Infinite takes the award for Best Use of Licensed / Borrowed Music, for its ingenious old-timey, anachronistic arrangements of more modern songs by the Beach Boys, Cyndi Lauper, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, among others. (What are these songs doing in 1912? You'll have to play the game to find out.) As an example, here's a ragtime version of "Tainted Love":
Last, I also love this minimalist rendition of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?", which works on so many levels as the unofficial theme song of Bioshock Infinite. Enjoy, and happy gaming.
