Zero Punctuation: Top 5 Games of 2013

[ShinobiJedi42]

I'm just happy that at least someone remembered that there are games objectively worse than Knack. Even if you didn't like Knack it objectively has no place on a list like this because there are plenty of games that are provably worse than it this year.

(And no, I'm not just talking about Jim's video from two days ago. He's one of them, but not the only one by any means.)

I'd be really curious to see what Yahtzee thinks of Gone Home. That's easily my game of the year.

I'd guess he would think it's shit. It's a horror game that fails at being scary which is something he's blasted plenty of games for in the past, and it's less interactive than Beyond Two Souls which he just complained about again in this video.

The only reason Gone Home isn't on my own worst game of the year list at #1 is because I can't in good faith call it a game. I can certainly call it bad, though.

Someone below you mentioned a bait and switch. I agree. It never fully advertises itself as a horror game. And as someone who has read the entire Twilight saga and fully hated the shallow, incessant romance, I disagree that the story is worse than Twilight. The romance in the story was very real. It was subtle romance. No grand sweeps of declaration of enthrallment you see in the Twilight saga. I've felt those feelings before when I was that age. The nostalgia felt hauntingly real and evoked emotions in me I haven't felt since then. That's why I loved the game so much. It's very personal. I also love how it's one of the few video games I've played where the player character is not the main character of the story. I'm sorry you feel that way about the game, though. It's a real shame.

 

[Triality]

Inspired choice for your Lifetime Achievement, Yahtzee.

I swear to Buddha, Deep Silver CANNOT go a single year without either 1) Causing a horrifying controversy with it's Premium Edition game side-item choices 2) Making abhorrent turds imitating games or 3)Doing both at the same time. Seriously, Ride to Hell, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, and Dead Island (including that infuriating decapitated and fully amputated bikini-clad torso babe statue [bleeds internally]).

Dear Deep Silver, in the service of honesty, please remove Silver from your company name and place "The" and then "End" before and after "Deep" respectively. Because that is where your company's business practices take their water breaks.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Bioshock?... That was surprisingly populist and non hipsterish of him. After PP I thought he was gonna say Stanley Parable.

 

[l0lwut]

Can't have a problem with any game on the top 4. I don't know about 5 but Metal Gear games really don't agree with me and I'd sooner go for Tomb Raider or GTA V on that one. I enjoyed Papers, Please and Bioshock: Infinte immensly, even though many people seem to prefer Gone Home over the former and have been really critical of the latter's combat.

Haven't played much of the bottom 5; I wasn't going to waste my money on SimCity or Aliens after all the bad press those games got (for good reason) and David Cage just seemed to have lost it. Call of Duty doesn't even show up on my radar; I can't imagine anyone outside their frat boy target demographic actually enjoying that game.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

First the community and now Yatzhee?! Will someone please tell me which version of Papers Please everyone is playing that such a incredible game?! I must have gotten like a beta release with all the bugs, crashes, poor optimization and sticky mess instead of the epic mind-altering version everyone else got.

 

[Mydnyght]

First the community and now Yatzhee?! Will someone please tell me which version of Papers Please everyone is playing that such a incredible game?! I must have gotten like a beta release with all the bugs, crashes, poor optimization and sticky mess instead of the epic mind-altering version everyone else got.

All I can say is, where and when did you get that game? I got it from GOG on Sept 2. Specifically, shortly after seeing LRR's "Papers, Please" video.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/8009-Papers-Please

 

[Raika]

I'm genuinely surprised that Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon didn't crack the top five. He seemed much more enthusiastic about it than he did about Metal Gear Rising or The Last of Us at the time.

Also, someone really needs to get around to telling David Cage that he is completely devoid of worth. Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls are basically this generation's two worst games, and I'd honestly rather play Superman on the Nintendo 64 than either of them.

 

[Kanjidude]

I'd be really curious to see what Yahtzee thinks of Gone Home. That's easily my game of the year.

I completely agree with both sentences ? Gone Home was hands down my favorite game of 2013, and I'd love to hear Yahtzee's opinion on it. I can't tell if he, as a writer, would love it, or if he'd (for partly the same reason) hate it.

 

[Corn Bread]

I totally agree on this entire list, which was quite pleasing to me.

 

[knox140]

Bioshock?... That was surprisingly populist and non hipsterish of him. After PP I thought he was gonna say Stanley Parable.

He didn't review it, though, so it couldn't have been No.1 even if he liked it the most. He did do an Extra Punctuation about it, though.

 

[ckam]

So I see that Ride to Hell got 0th Place in Zero Punctuation! Ha!

?Kill me now.

 

[The Great JT]

I would've given it to Papers, Please, if only for the unbelievable feat of making government paperwork tense, exciting and a constant moral dilemma.

 

[Darth_Payn]

As someone working retail for the holidays, that opening for the #5 Top made me smile, because I have earned it. Kind of pleasantly surprised at his choice, because MGRR wasn't even trying to be "art" like the other two (about dirty depressed people getting beat up) and it remembered, like Saints Row IV, that video games should be FUN. Also surprised that Bioshock:Infinite got the Top #! spot, since its gameplay does what CoD: Ghosts's does. Or did Ken Levine do that on purpose to be "satirical"? Like how the Beastie Boys made "Fight For Your Right (To Party)" to make fun of the people who like that kind of music?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

All I can say is, where and when did you get that game? I got it from GOG on Sept 2. Specifically, shortly after seeing LRR's "Papers, Please" video.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/8009-Papers-Please

Sometime around Halloween, so lets go with maybe October 29th? I've had so many god damn problems with it. First it took forever to install correctly, like 2-3 times. Then it kept crashing. Then it kept freezing. Then it kept bugging. Then it broke my Steam, rewriting some Cloud file than couldn't be fixed without deleting all of Steam and re installing the entire thing. And you know what, I'm not going to re-install Papers Please.
All of those problems, I could live with. Truly, that won't keep me away from a game. But it was boring too. On top of barely playable...it was barely play worthy. And now that I think of it, 'play' is a little too generous. It felt like one of those crappy minigames in larger MMOs, like Fallout: New Vegas gambling, or Skyrim wood cutting. Like it was meant to be in some larger game, but the entire larger game got axed.

I am woefully unimpressed with this game. I'd rank it alongside SimCity for utter failure.

 

[Saidan]

Loved the last award, I'm still laughing right now.

 

[tzimize]

Pug! Also, poor Aliens: Colonial Marines, it didn't deserve this. Bioshock Infinite is a good choice for number one though it could have done with more than a sentence's justification, still I guess there's only so much you can fit into a five minute video commenting on ten eleven games.

Scuse me? If by didnt deserve this, you mean the franchise deserved better? I agree. If you mean it didnt deserve to be on this list I can only counter with, "what?".

 

[RedDeadFred]

I had no interest in Revengeance and I haven't played Papers Please yet but the other 3 are also my 3 favourites. I'm not actually sure which one I like more.
Saints Row 4 was pure, hilarious fun
Infinite told an amazing story and I loved the skyrails
Black Flag is great in pretty much every way. Doing pirate stuff never gets old.

 

[Kargathia]

But...bioshock infinite is a terrible half finished mess of generic shooting, shit characters and more plot holes then a novel made of Swiss Cheese. It eschews all the good parts of the first game for bland call of duty shooting, copy pasted plasmids and even less challenge. Not to mention every single e3 preview they had was full of lies and broken promises. Seriously, go look at those previews and then think back to the game you played. It is a profound disappointment.

... And now compare it to the other games released this year. It's definitely one of the -better- games this year, warts and all.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I love these videos.

I was surprised by the worst game of the year. There are worse games out there to be sure, but then I sat and thought about it. Ghosts is easily the worst CoD game so far, by far. The campaign was boring, the characters were flat, and it just seemed to never have that 'pop' moment like the others. And then that ending...I can accept a lot in a CoD game. I cannot accept that that ending was possible.

Spoiler

Let me see if I've got this straight. Rorck--or whatever--gets tossed around the train cabin, beat up, shot clean through the bloody chest, falls off of a bridge, and finally drowned, and I'm supposed to believe that he survived all that, swam to shore while bleeding, managed to overpower Logan and Hesh, and drag Logan away with backup not five minutes away? No, sorry. That's just not possible, even in a CoD story.

So yeah, I guess CoD Ghosts is probably the worst game of the year. It was so bland, so much of a letdown, so much of, "Is this all there is?" that it was a bigger letdown than actual bad games.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

So for anyone who loves stats & lists (like me), here is the rundown of Yahtzee's best and worst:

Best Game
2007 - Portal (Unofficial - described as "perfect")
2008 - Saints Row 2
2009 - Batman: Arkham Asylum
2010 - Just Cause 2
2011 - Portal 2
2012 - Spec Ops: The Line
2013 - Bioshock: Infinite

Worst Game
"Honorable Mention" - Too Human (considered worst game reviewed for years)
2010 - Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
2011 - Modern Warfare 3 & Battlefield 3
2012 - Amy
2013 - Call of Duty: Ghosts

Lifetime Achievement for "Total Abhorrence" - Ride to Hell: Retribution (2013)

Thanks for the list, it's actually pretty helpful for building up a belated PS3 collection.