Horace; Ursine Ourobouros

December 28, 2013 3:36 PM

PC game superblog Rockpapershotgun's 24 Games of Christmas. Individual links below.

1. Don’t Starve
2. Hexcells
3. Desktop Dungeons
4. Papers, Please
5. Card Hunter
6. Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons
7. The Swapper
8. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
9. Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs
10. Dishonored DLC
11. Eurotruck Simulator
12. Rogue Legacy
13. XCOM: Enemy Within
14. Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger
15. Proteus
16. Monaco
17. Spelunky
18. Knock, Knock
19. Europa Universalis
20. The Stanley Parable
21. Saints Row IV
22. Teleglitch
23. Gone Home
24. Kentucky Route Zero

And a few helpings of Christmas leftovers: one, two, three.

posted by Sebmojo (16 comments total)

Poor Horace.
posted by Hobo at 4:22 PM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was really glad to see A Machine For Pigs get some recognition. It's my favourite game of 2013, and I think it would've gotten a lot more positive attention if it weren't for the expectations associated with the Amnesia name, which it really isn't trying to fulfil at all (and which is a good thing from my point of view, since I still think The Dark Descent is immensely overrated). And oh god, Knock-Knock! I didn't follow the Kickstarter, so it was entirely not what I expected when a new Ice-Pick Lodge game appeared out of the blue, but it was kind of an amazing surprise.

And yeah, poor Horace. I love how, at least at one point, there were no comments actually about the leftover games. Everyone was just mourning an imaginary endless bear :(
posted by emmtee at 4:44 PM on December 28, 2013

Still miffed they didn't mention Wargame: AirLand Battle in there somewhere. Because that really is one of the best realtime strategy games of the past couple of years, and it's set in the eighties Cold War.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:13 PM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I have been eyeing the new X-COM games, they seem about my speed. And shout-out to Teleglitch, which is a great game with a post by Cortex.
posted by rosswald at 5:53 PM on December 28, 2013

Finally got to play Gone Home. One of the most affecting bits of media I've seen.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:31 PM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

I really liked seeing Teleglitch rank so high this year. That game has been like bread to me. I was interested in KRZ until I saw it was episodic. I think I can wait until the whole thing is out. Although I am really super duper surprised Gone Home wasn't the 24th. Like, VERY surprised. And although I loved BNW for civ5 I think it is good it was more of a leftover thing although, as much as I love me some xcom, I think EW should have been left over too. Shadow Warrior got a mention from them! That little game made me smile a lot while playing it.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 6:41 PM on December 28, 2013

I'm going to go out on a limb and de-recommend Hexcells. It's.. pretty dull. And short. I felt ripped off, even paying $3. If you're any good at Minesweeper at all, it has no challenge whatsoever.
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:45 PM on December 28, 2013

From the writeup on Kentucky Route Zero: "I can’t fucking believe it. Jesus Christ. I am backing a point and click adventure for Game Of The Year. Something cosmically, fundamentally wrong must have happened for this to be true."

ಠ_ಠ
posted by trunk muffins at 7:48 PM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, you can paraphrase that as saying, "This game is so good, a reviewer who generally hates this genre chose it as his Game Of The Year."
posted by straight at 8:17 PM on December 28, 2013

State of Decay is my choice for GotY.
posted by reiichiroh at 10:54 PM on December 28, 2013

Dota 2 is my GOTY.

I'm a bit sad that it's overlooked by many (though PC Gamer selected it as the Esport of the year).

I don't blame RPS they were always kinda "elitsit" in the sense that that they never liked ARTS and F2P games (but Valve revolutionized the genre so it's not like a Zynga F2P game). Still they should have at least mention it. Dota 2 is an amazing game with incredibly depthness and addiction rate. Yeah, the community is toxic and the learning curve is steep as a north face... but still. GOTY.

Also one time games like Brothers and Gone Home is on the list but Bioshock Infinite and Fez isn't...
posted by bdz at 12:54 AM on December 29, 2013

Machine for Pigs had really amazing writing, and a great theme, but I think it was too ambitious for the team making it, and poorly made as a game. It was a fun house ride, and any actual game elements were mostly just annoying, in that they were both poorly done and interrupted the flow of the experience.

I definitely enjoyed playing it, though.
posted by empath at 2:38 AM on December 29, 2013

I personally vouch for Spelunky and Desktop Dungeons. The latter hasn't gotten nearly the love it deserves, but Spelunky seems to have gotten itself some general recognition at least.
posted by JHarris at 8:36 AM on December 29, 2013

State of Decay is my choice for GotY.

I almost bought it, but then I read that it tries a real-time kind of thing where if you don't play for a couple of days it advances game time a bit, and you could come back to find the game situation has deteriorated from when you last played. Which, okay, a neat idea, but not too friendly to people who have other things they need to go with their time?
posted by JHarris at 8:38 AM on December 29, 2013

I really want to like state of decay, but the combination of ironman roguelike and slow, semi mission based story really kills me. I know it's going for tension, and normally I love that, but the game really needs some give.

It does look like the new dlc tries to fix that some, but by taking out the story parts and making it more emergent gameplay.
posted by aspo at 8:50 AM on December 29, 2013

Judging from the amount of time I spent playing it, I think my GOTY was Skyrim.

I'm delighted to see Proteus on this list, I got it recently and it's brilliant in a way that takes all my words away. I really hope "impressionist landscape painting" becomes a genre, despite all the people complaining that it's not a game and that the only reason anyone would like it would be to look pretentious and artsy.
posted by egypturnash at 10:04 AM on December 29, 2013