Indie titles rivaled big-name sequels in last year’s gaming wars
*1. The Last of Us – Naughty Dog
*“The Last of Us” is one of those once-in-a-console-generation marvels; the culmination of industry-leading technical talent, a AAA budget, exceptional writing, and a precision focused vision of the final experience driving everything.
It is a grueling experience, one in which the smallest encounter with just a handful enemies can raise the hair on the back of your neck and make your palms sweat. It’s a stealth game where the sneaking mechanics necessitate from the fear of conflict rather than provide the player with ninja empowerment. It’s a shooter with truly limited resources, in which firing a gun feels less like instinct and more like a calculated decision. It’s a game that invites the player to laugh and develop a deep bond with its characters, just so that, in its darkest moments, it gets to twist the knife in your wounded soul just a few degrees further.
Games are such a collaborative medium that it is incredibly rare to find one that feels as wholly singular as “The Last of Us.” It doesn’t feel designed by committee, or compromised, or like it’s setting up for another multi-million dollar franchise. Like a great novel, everything in it feels purposeful, like part of the story it wants to tell. And that story may well be one of the most powerful in the history of video games.
*2. Papers Please – Lucas Pope
*In “Papers Please,” the player takes control of a border guard in a fictional country called Arstotzka. Gameplay involves sifting through paper documents, looking for possible discrepancies in immigrants’ passports.
Towards the end of game, the small desk which the player is provided transforms into a chaotic sea of documents, forms, filing cabinets, keys, and rule books, buried one atop the other. And somehow, despite how sleep-inducingly tedious the game may sound on paper, the actual act of playing it can prove quite satisfying.
And therein lies the brilliance of “Papers Please”: it takes its various characters, their plights and struggles, and reduces everything to the barest of gameplay mechanics, systems, and rules. Eventually, I found myself so streamlined and focused in my process that no amount of begging would be cause for an exception. “Papers Please” had me far too locked into its cold, unflinching bureaucracy to care just how hungry or sick any immigrant was. I just stamped papers, and moved on. And to this day I’m still thinking about what that says about society, game mechanics, and even myself. That it manages to be so thought provoking while avoiding pretension makes “Papers Please” my ideal indie game.
*3. Rayman Legends – Ubisoft Montpellier
*Between its gorgeous watercolor art, perpetually inventive level design, positively adorable character animations, and devilishly catchy soundtrack, “Rayman Legends” is just an absolute delight to play. The quirky personality that Michel Ancel brings to every one of his games is made even more irresistible in this follow-up to 2011’s “Rayman Origins.” Don’t let it charm you too much, though; it’s a deceptively challenging platformer, one which will put your timing, reflexes, and even rhythm, to the test. It can be tough, even brutal at times, but the challenge always feels fair. Plus, the controls are so good, you’ll have no one to blame for failure but yourself.
Not to mention, playing “Legends” on a couch with a few friends cooperatively is some of the most outright joy I’ve had playing a game in a long while.
*4. Bioshock Infinite – Irrational Games
*Arguably the most fascinating and drop dead gorgeous game setting of the year, “Bioshock Infinite’s” Columbia is the kind of city Walt Disney’s imagineers would have dreamt up in their heyday. Every square inch of the city in the clouds begs to be explored, whether it might contain another tasty nugget of backstory, or just one more trashcan hot dog.
The game’s best encounters were those which opened up into large arenas, where players could take advantage of the roller coaster-like Sky-lines, Vigor traps and reinforcements from behind Elizabeth’s tears in reality. In a genre full of stop-and-pop military shooters, “Infinite’s” ultra-mobile and lightning quick combat is quite a refreshing take.
The ending of “Infinite” toys with ideas about parallel universes, of their constants and variables. In a metatextual sense, it is examining its own existence as a video game sequel, and the sorts of limited freedoms that come with that role. Much as “Infinite’s” grand ambitions propel it skyward, the expectations of what a “Bioshock” game can and should be create a mighty undertow, harkening back, continually, to that iconic Art Deco metropolis at the bottom of the Atlantic. Torn in as many different directions as its multiverses, “Infinite” tries to toe the impossible line of being as creative, shocking, and revered as that original game, yet simultaneously being something completely new. Where its final moments take it is just as much about reconciling that difficult situation as it is about blowing your freaking mind.
*5. Gone Home – The Fullbright Company
*“Gone Home” is not the most exciting game on this list. In it, the player doesn’t get to save the world or defeat some nefarious villain. In fact, there’s no combat in it whatsoever. But that is – you guessed it – precisely the point. “Gone Home” is about showcasing that video games can, with the right amount of care, tell small-scale and intimate narratives.
“Gone Home” is a story about a household, and all that our homes say about us, all the secrets they hide and all the memories they hold traces of. There’s an eerily voyeuristic quality about spending hours rummaging through bookbags, listening to cassette tapes and reading secret love letters, but that uncomfortably personal detail only adds to the complex atmosphere that is constantly morphing, shifting throughout the duration of “Gone Home.” The way the game deconstructs and subverts expectations of the medium, as well as the way it deftly conveys its deeply touching coming-of-age story, make it one of the most memorable games of 2013.
*6. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons – Starbreeze Studios
*The way we interact with a controller is something we don’t often think about when it comes to playing games. After learning what buttons do what, control schemes typically fade away to our subconscious, and playing the game becomes nearly instinctual. “Brothers” however, never lets its players forget about the way they interact with it. In it, players control the two brothers independently, with the older brother mapped to the left stick and the younger to the right.
Bright and cheery as it may appear, “Brothers” is actually a story about a loss of innocence. The disparity between what the pull of a trigger accomplishes in the first few hours of the game versus what it commands in the final stretch says more than any line of dialogue ever could. The fact that “Brothers” never loses sight of that interplay between its story and its controls make it 2013’s most artful game. Its final sequence is beautiful and poetic, a moment which must be experienced firsthand, with your hands on the controller, to truly be appreciated.
*7. The Swapper – Facepalm Games
*“The Swapper” channels a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. You, an anonymous scavenger in a spacesuit, board a space station whose entire crew has been killed. There is no sign of life anywhere, not even enemies. The only other thing keeping you company aboard the derelict station are the soulless, carbon-copy clones you create of yourself, using a science experiment called The Swapper.
It’s not only a clever puzzle game with a unique atmosphere, it also tells a story intrinsically linked to its cloning and swapping mechanics. This means that what the player is doing and what the game is saying are constantly in sync, in the sort of way that the original “Portal” did so masterfully.
When the player swaps to a new body, are they exchanging souls, consciousnesses, or are they effectually killing themselves to be reborn elsewhere? It’s these sorts of weird, metaphysical questions that “The Swapper” is obsessed with. Its ending offers the player a simple, binary choice, but a brilliant one that says more about the person at the controls than about the game itself.
*8. Saints Row IV – Volition, Inc.
*“Saints Row IV” isn’t afraid to break conventions, or even its own mechanics for that matter. Though it stumbles a bit along the way, it represents the self-actualization of the entire series. In its fourth entry, “Saints Row” has finally found itself. Granted, it found itself somewhere in a closet full of worn out comic books, 90s gangster rap CDs, and anime VHS tapes, but for that unmistakable and uniquely asinine personality, “Saints Row IV” is some of the most hilarious video game fun of 2013. Plus, I’d be lying if I told you that firing the Dubstep Gun for the first time didn’t put the biggest, stupidest grin on my face.
*9. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Ubisoft Montreal
*“Assassin’s Creed IV” was the comeback kid of 2013. After the bloated, messy, and frankly boring game that was last year’s “Assassin’s Creed III,” it seemed like the annualization of the series had finally driven it off a cliff.
But “Black Flag” proved that there’s still plenty of exciting new possibilities for the French franchise to mine. Setting the clock back to the early 1700s, “Black Flag” zeroes in on the pirates of the New World during that time. The lush visuals and inspired environment design of the Caribbean immediately make an impression, and beg to be explored to trinket-hoarding completion. And that vast open world of gorgeous ocean, with its swashbuckling naval combat, is enough to make any diehard fan of “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker” go weak in the knees.
That “Black Flag” manages to string together its dozens of gameplay mechanics into a cohesive whole is an impressive achievement. That it does so while returning the series to its roots of exploration and open-ended stealth makes it the best “Assassin’s Creed” in years.
*10. Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs – The Chinese Room
*As a proper sequel to the 2010 cult classic “Amnesia: The Dark Descent,” The Chinese Room’s take on the “Amnesia” series may prove a bit disappointing. “A Machine for Pigs” does away with the prior game’s elaborate puzzle designs, inventory, and even its insanity mechanic. However, devoid of the expectations of its predecessor, “A Machine for Pigs” is one of the most audacious horror games in years. It takes the philosophy of “what you don’t see is scarier than what you do” to the extreme, crafting entire hour long sections of the game composed of little more than pure, surrealistic atmosphere. For those with active imaginations, the steam-belching mechanisms of “A Machine for Pigs’” hellish abattoir will chew you up and spit you out a ruined mess.