I think we know that Grand Theft Auto V was the most commercially successful game released in 2013 by a wide margin, and there are some good reasons for that that have everything to do with the great care and love with which it replicates the details and feel of a real American city at a specific point in time and the variety of things it offers the player to do within that context. There's lots I like about it in that vein and a few things I don't care for. At the end of the day though, I had many other favorites that year that I liked better because they liked me better, including titles that would become my second and fourth-favorite games of all time. In fact, 2013 was my favorite year in gaming since 1994. Some of the titles I enjoyed the most from that year included...
1. The Last of Us
2. Gone Home
3. Papers, Please <-- Is it an alternative past or a glimpse of the future? Tough to tell.
4. The Stanley Parable
5. Rayman Legends <-- I mean...those rhythm levels especially...just yes!! 
6. BioShock Infinite
7. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch*
8. Tomb Raider
9. Kentucky Route Zero (Acts I and II)
10. Super Mario 3D World
11. Depression Quest <-- Thanks, Gamergate. You basically made me play it.
12. TowerFall
13. Puppeteer
14. Grand Theft Auto V <-- It's still worth a mention here.
*Though it came out in Japan in 2011, I can't resist listing it here too because it came out in '13 Stateside, which is when I actually played it.
My favorite game from 2013 is The Last of Us. It's my second-favorite game of all time and I don't think I realistically need to explain the reasons why I love it so much to this particular crowd, but I will say just a few things here about this choice. Like I've said a number of times now over the course of these threads, the first time I was introduced to this medium back in 1986, my young brain had expected something like a movie or a show I could interact with. Such a thing just wasn't feasible with the technology available at the time and I was somewhat disappointed by that. As the years went on though, I kept coming back to that dream as more and more games drawing on a real cinematic flair began to appear. The Last of Us though brought the concept of a cinematic gaming experience to an entirely different level of realization than I'd ever experienced before. It was absolutely breathtaking in its attention to detail and care to accurately replicate even the very smallest of facial movements. It's in the way the camera lingers on especially poignant movement to capture subtle emotional changes, the way the ambiently subdued music fades in and out organically, both capturing and enhancing the mood of a moment in time and so much more.
More than all that though, so many stories in video games have been about moral ambiguity, but so often they simply give the player "good" and "bad" character arcs to go through and choose between wherein, in truth, the "right" choice is obvious and rewarded while the "bad" choice is equally obvious and penalized. The Last of Us acknowledges the reality that making everything obvious and interactive isn't always the best course. While it's clear what Joel should do in the end, he instead, without the player's involvement in the decision, does instead what most of us would actually do in real life without incentivizing us to pretend we're superhuman and there's something exponentially more powerful about simply allowing us to process that and recognize Joel as an agent in his own right. The Last of Us doesn't pretend that there are always easy answers or that you'll always make the "right" choices.
I guess I'm also kinda biased in favor of TLOU for some of the particular relationships that unfold in the course of your adventure. By now, those who have followed my posts on these threads will have some general idea of what my relationship to my own dad was like and as such will probably understand why I instinctively latched on to Ellie's kind of adoptive daughter type relationship to Joel. There was in a way something there that I just yearned for, like being able to earn some real paternal love, and in Ellie a young female character I felt more similar to (at least at the analogous age) than really any other I'd met in a video game before. The pun-ishing sense of humor, the general tomboyishness, and the paralyzing fear of abandonment all felt exceptionally familiar. Even some of her tastes in video games bore a certain resemblance, as did her lesbian sexuality, which itself was not a common thing to feature sympathetically and without fetishization in games at the time. In point of fact, the Left Behind DLC released the following year offers quite possibly the downright sweetest (if ultimately bittersweet) lesbian romance in this whole medium, in my personal opinion.
That said, Left Behind, like I just mentioned, was actually released in 2014. That was when we actually learned that Ellie was gay. Gone Home, by contrast, came out in 2013 itself. I still consider Gone Home my fourth-favorite video game ever to this day. It's sort of become my go-to comfort game when I'm feeling extra extra down or anxious. I latched onto it strongly on my first playthrough because I'd never seen a game story that centered on sapphic love (without gross fetishization) before.
Set on a dark and stormy night in June of 1995, Gone Home is played from the (first-person) perspective of one Katie Greenbriar who, on returning from overseas to her family's new home in fictional Boon County, Oregon, discovers an unnerving note on the door revealing her younger sister, Samantha (or "Sam" for short) to be missing. Taking over control of Katie, the player walks into a curiously empty house to search her out. While the mystery of Sam's whereabouts hangs over the entire exploration that follows, it soon becomes evident that you are in no danger and can and should relax and take your time uncovering the backgrounds, personalities, and significant events in the lives of the Greenbriars that have led up to this point; a feat you'll accomplish by carefully examining the decor and objects of its rooms and hallways (nearly all of which are clickable) for bits and pieces of insight.
While the aforementioned implied player mission exists as motivation, the game has no defined goals. It's about discovery for its own sake. I like that about it! I like the devotion to authenticity that these mundane slice-of-life adventures feature because they are quite rare and often especially relatable. Gone Home, in this connection and others, reminds me in certain defining ways of the Theresa Duncan games (Chop Suey, Smarty, and Zero Zero) I used to love back in the 1990s, as well as, in a way, the Nancy Drew mysteries I used to enjoy playing around the turn of the century. It's sort of like if those concepts were fused into one game and polished into 3D with some of the strongest voice acting in this entire medium and most treasured music from my youth.
Speaking of, I was very much into the riot grrl underground (yes, that's a proper spelling) and a participant in the movement back in the day. Gone Home's fairly deep dive into that oft-forgotten world within the contemporaneous punk scene stands out as something that only this game has ever included before and a central part of what makes it so special to me. The developers' depth of understanding of, and respect for, early '90s teen lesbian/feminist culture didn't just surprise me when first I experienced it, it completely overwhelmed me with emotion. To put matters in perspective for you, Gone Home was originally released the same month that Grand Theft Auto V was and the latter really did contemporaneously sum up where the relationship between video games and women was at the time just in general. I felt hated, straight up. There's no nice way of putting it. And then here was this proverbial torrential downpour of acknowledgement and validation in the midst of that climate. I will never ever forget how special it felt to get to experience that, especially in the view of its core message that home is not a space defined by your residence, but wherever you find love and acceptance. More than any other one title, Gone Home is the one that made an indie gamer out of me and set me down my current path of mind toward this medium.
But there's much more to Gone Home than just its romance.
Spoiler!
Another one of Gone Home's most compelling mysteries, for example, revolves around the "haunting" of Katie and Sam's father Terry by his history of being sexually abused as a child in this very setting and all the attendant consequences that this has for his relationship to both his wife Janice and, seemingly, his attitude toward same-sex intimacy itself, as applied to Sam and her life and love. The story of his redemption is so deeply human and uplifting that the premise of his final book still gets me all misty-eyed to this day even though I've played through the game countless times at this point. And yet there's a deliberate irony to the game's conclusion in that his redemption has come too late to save another important relationship; the nuances of life represented honestly, to a bittersweet end. It's too bad that not everyone uncovers the whole of this side story because it adds a welcome layer of gravitas to the experience.
While it would be easy to build a case that there are stronger stories about sapphic love in this medium today, the compassionate and well-rounded honesty of Gone Home's portrayal of where that stood in the context of 1995 and the way it imbues progressively greater meaning onto writings and objects noticed early on as you progress and unearth more revelations about the lives of the Greenbriars still stands the test of time incredibly well for me. There's a reason why you can see, and feel, nods to it in much bigger games that came out afterward ranging from Life is Strange to Uncharted 4. There are precious few gaming experiences truly like Gone Home, and fewer still that have felt as personalized and loving to me.
Here's my favorite review of this little cult classic for a greater sense of what's to love about it:
ANYWAY, I just wanted to single out those two titles for a special mention. What haven't I mentioned that's worth adding? The Tomb Raider remake from '13 was my new favorite game in the franchise. I greatly appreciated the increased humanization (and yest, it must be said, de-sexualization) of Lara as a character here more than anything else. Super Mario 3D World actually remains one of my all-time favorite titles in the mainline Super Mario platformers. I loved the selectable character variety and getting to play the game I'd expected Super Mario 64 to be when I first got it finally.
I think that sums it up.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 05 December 2023
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