PixlBit

I liked Space Marine a lot. When I was playing through that game I actually put earbuds in and listened through entire Sabaton albums while playing that. Julian knows what Sabaton is like, and it ended up setting up a great mood to mesh with Warhammer 40k.

I did a whole user review of Alien Isolation on Pixlbit back in 2014 after I finished it. It was a really awesome game but the length doesn't do it any favors. You end up seeing the same level design mechanics over and over. There's always another generator to prime, another quarantine to lift, and a new door to get through. The most frustrating thing is that the story is interesting and there are a lot of cool moments peppered throughout the game all the way to the end. But there's a bit of fluff in between and you have to get through it if you want to see the payoffs. It isn't the kind of game where you could play the 1st 8 hours, see everything you need to see, and then quit. It has an interesting world, fantastic stealth gameplay, suspense and dread in the best ways, but the level design and moment-to-moment gameplay finds every possible way to drag the overall story out and keep you playing.

I could totally see Sabaton and Space Marine as a great pairing.

My 2013 Chrono Crossing pick is: The Cave, Ron Gilbert's action puzzler. Each character had a unique path through the game and all the puzzles were fun as heck. I completed all the achievements and had a blast doing them.

For the next episode regarding my favorite game of 2013 looking back in hindsight.

Back in 2013 I couldn't stop singing the praises of Bioshock Infinite, but in 2016 I don't look back on that game with nearly the same reverence. I tried to play through it again and realized I don't like the combat as much as I thought, and the story only worked on me once. Which is fine; it was a fantastic story with interesting characters and no expense spared in the production values. Elizabeth's AI programming, the soft body simulation of her dress, and her animation in general were all serious achievements of design and programming.

I don't want to rewrite history and act like Bioshock Infinite wasn't a great game, but I don't necessarily think it stands the test of time like I expected it to. With all that said, remember back to 2013 when all anybody on gaming websites could talk about or write about were articles Bioshock related for at least 3 months. People were dissecting that story and debating over it for months afterwards in a way nobody did with The Last of Us or any of the other major releases. Remember how that term "ludo-narrative dissonance" suddenly became a part of gamer's vernacular, for better or worse. Very few games ever command that kind of interest from such a wide swath of people; Bioshock Infinite was quite the zeitgeist. All of that has to be worth something.

Looking back, my favorite game of 2013 was Metro Last Light. It stands the test of time in every way. It's gorgeous to look at, even with the vanilla version, let alone the upgraded Redux version. The atmosphere is unmatched in its bleak and rainy depiction of post apocalyptic Moscow, and the stealth-survival-shooter gameplay is still really solid. Of all the 2013 games Last Light is the one I'm still totally in love with and playing to this day.

Honorable mentions to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and Tomb Raider!

P.S. I honestly thought I would pick Tomb Raider, but the Russkie simulators speak to me in a way even Lara Croft can't.

I still have Warhammer 40k Space Marine in my backlog. I played the demo years ago and really liked it. Seemed a lot like Gears of War. I can't wait to play it. 

Culdcept Saga is an old favorite of mine. I played the demo on Xbox Live and liked it right away. I got that then tracked down the PS2 game, which is the first game in the series. Culdcept Saga was called Culdcept 2 in Japan, and I have that for Dreamcast even though I can't really play it without knowing Japanese. I thought it was different but it's just Culdcept Saga. There was a 3DS game that, I think, came out in Japan, but it never came to other regions. I really wanted to play that, and I would play any new Culdcept game day-one for sure. Monopoly meets Magic, that's about right. I agree it's more Monopoply than Magic. 

That Nier music! Holy crow. I don't usually dig that kind of soundtrack but Nier's is so good.

Okay, I'm gonna do as you say and just pick one game: Spelunky. *yes* it's the enhanced port of a game released in 2008, but this is the definitive edition and the one that almost everyone played. I probably put 200 hours into Spelunky. I love it. (If you don't allow Spelunky then Rogue Legacy is my second choice. It was kind of a crappy year for games.)

You and Michael117 have Spelunky in common. I'd say you can pick either, since they scratch the same itch. I prefer Rogue Legacy, but it clicked with me more.

I was "bored" the other day and decided to work on a list of games for Chrono Crossing.  For the most part it was pretty easy to fill in the years back to 1991, before that I have been having some issues with games and the year they were released.  I am probably just going to have to boot up all my favorite games and see what the title screen says.

I had initially thought that I would just pull up the wikipedia entry for games released in a specific year, but after looking through 2014 I did not really like that approach.  So, I decided to think of my favorite games and look up the year they were released and then scale my list down if I had multiple games from the same year.  I had quite a bit of fun doing it that way.

I like that system!

It forced me to think of my favorite games, and I realized that 2010 was one of my favorite years in gaming.  I came up with 5 or 6 games that I would make my list of all-time favorite games.  Can I say favorite any more times in one paragraph?

This was I think one of the years I wasn't playing ANYTHING new. I got a Steam-ready laptop in 2012, but didn't actually use it for gaming until 2013. 

I played Shovel Knight either late December or some time in 2015, but I'd go with that for this year. 

I realize no one cares at this point, I'm just doing this for me. I love this segment. 

Super wish I had access to current Flash episodes. I always catch up on Netflix a season later. 

I kinda dug the first couple episodes of Legends of Tomorrow. I like camp when it's done well. I love 60's Batman. 

There's too much f*ing TV in general. There is no way to have a full time job and watch all of it, unless watching all of it IS your job. 

To hell with DCU. Anyone remember that interview where the interviewer kept trying to get RDJ to compare his resolved drug problems with his role as Iron Man and RDJ told him to stop with his "dark shit?" That's how I now feel about every Snyder DC film. And I actually liked Watchmen. 

Nice touch with the SP Patrick referenced.