Can I please have some more?
I love Kentucky Route Zero. The series so far is one of my favorite things to happen to video games in the past decade, and the wait between episodes is excruciating. There’s just not much else that captures the tone of KRZ, a tone that series somehow seems to maintain effortlessly. There isn’t anything like it… but Black Gold comes pretty close. (more…)
It’s unfinished, and not even halfway done, but Kentucky Route Zero has had such a strong start it would be a travesty to push it off because of a technicality. Yes, it still has a few episodes to come out in 2014, and I’ll have to figure out how it’ll end up on that end of year list when the time comes. But when I think of the games I played in 2013, I think of Kentucky Route Zero.
More than the art-school project it might look like at first glance, Kentucky Route Zero is essentially a five act play in which you play the role of Conway, a truck driver who ended up driving down the back roads of Kentucky. The whole game has a very prevalent Twink Peaks-ish air of mystery and strangeness to it, and has left more of an impact on me than almost anything else I’ve played all year long. The dialogue choices, while they don’t change the way things play out, allow you to build the characters and the world more than almost any other game I’ve ever played.
There are so many instances that had me staring at my screen in awe, sometimes just because of a few lines of text I had read. While a game like Save the Date had a pretty big impact on me with its philosophy on game design, Kentucky Route Zero aims for a much broader scope and nails almost every tiny detail. If I compiled a list of my favorite moments in 2013, several of them would come from the events of KRZ, and just thinking about them now makes me want to boot it up yet again.
If the remainder of Kentucky Route Zero even comes close to the first two episodes and interludes, we’ll be seeing something really special. In a world where all five episodes had come out, all of this quality, this would have been my Game of the Year. As for now, Kentucky Route Zero is an episodic masterpiece, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.
This year, I don’t have a clear game to champion as my game of the year yet. That isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed anything- it’s quite the opposite- I’ve enjoyed a certain few games so much that I have yet to choose one above the others. I’ve got a pretty specific top three games that I keep flip-flopping between, but I enjoyed all of them so much it’s tough to choose a favorite. When you get down to my favorite three, you can basically put them in any order, they’re all that good. Last year I was able to hold Journey high and above everything (until The Walking Dead) with little competition to speak of. 2013 has been pretty great so far, with some surprises, disappointments, and a whole lot of incredible games. Here’s a rough estimate of my favorites of this year, and all of these can and will probably be changed before the end of 2013, who knows what could happen?. Let’s get started with… (more…)
June has been an embarrassment of riches for me. E3 happened (Yeah, that was less than a month ago) and was the most exciting E3 ever, and I’ve enjoyed just as many games this month than I have any other time this year. When I haven’t been obsessed with Animal Crossing, I’ve had the chance to pick up more than a few exceptional games in the past 30 days. The Last of Us was probably my most anticipated title I expected from 2013, and I’m supremely impressed with how it turned out. I can only hope the rest of the year remains as exciting.
My favorite Naughty Dog game by a longshot, The Last of Us finally proves to me what the company is capable of. The performances and storytelling all come together to create one of the most believable worlds this year, and the gameplay manages to hold up its end of the bargain as well. It’s a beautiful story well told, and is just as entertaining to play through as it is to watch.
The fourth game in the series doesn’t revolutionize the game by any means, but it does improve upon nearly every aspect of the formula. Nearly every day I’ve played in the past month I’ve been able to discover something new, and even now I’m stumbling into completely new avenues that I hadn’t touched before. This week, I’ve decided to completely redesign my house from the basement up. New stores continue to open, new villagers keep dropping by, and friends still have new stories to tell about what’s going on in their town. While it’s much of the same we’ve seen before, it’s a great foundation that I’m happy to keep coming back to again and again. And the hourly music makes me happy every time I turn the thing on.
This weird series has been one of the most interesting things to come out of 2013 so far. With dream-like logic and heaps of creativity, Kentucky Route Zero is consistently the most surprising game I enjoy returning to every few months. The strange world is so well crafted, the weirdness feels right at home. If the quality stays as high as it’s been with the first two episodes, Kentucky Route Zero will be one of the most easily recommendable hits of the year.
SpyParty (Open beta): SpyParty has been around for years, but this month is the first time it’s been available for purchase, so I’m cheating and putting it here. It is one of my favorite games of the year, and demands an incredible amount of patience, attention to detail, and a little luck. I can’t stop playing round after round.
Room of 1000 Snakes: There are no words. Click the link, spend your 90 seconds, enjoy your day.
New Super Luigi U: While it doesn’t have that new game smell, it’s an excuse to return to one of the Wii U’s best games, and plow through some pretty tough platforming.
(Also, if for some reason you haven’t played Hotline Miami, it just came out on Vita and PS3 this month. It was one of the best games of last year, and plays excellently with either new system. Get it now, ask questions later.)
– Zach
Image Sources: edge-online.com polygon.com rockpapershotgun.com
Kentucky Route Zero is easily one of my favorite games of the year, and it isn’t even halfway over. The first act introduced us to a dreamlike version of Kentucky, filled with some of the year’s best writing and biggest, oddest surprises. The second attempts to build on all of that, and take it a step further, with mostly positive results. (more…)
After the end of each month, I’ll be choosing my 3 favorite games that were released in that month. Think of it as an ongoing Game of the Year selection process to help us decide the best of the best as the year goes on. Let’s get started with my favorite game from January… (more…)
hippochippies 
