Every website I’ve ever worked at, even the scrappy upstart freelance sites, have eventually been blanked. Vanished. All my work, gone. Deleted and unable to be retrieved. But since now I co-own this website, nobody gets to destroy my game of the year top ten lists but me!
For now, I have to re-do them from scratch, and I don’t care if the order isn’t the same as it was back in the day. This is 2025 me making these, not 2012 me! I’m sure there are things I forgot about, indies lost in the shuffle, honorable mentions not mentioned, but I’m only human. I’m just a mere mortal — a man dedicated to chronicling what I deem to be the best games of each chunk of twelve months.
2013
Honorable Mentions: “Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus,” “Super Mario 3D World,” “Sly Cooper 4: Thieves in Time,” “Guacamelee,” “Mario and Luigi: Dream Team,” “Splinter Cell: Blacklist,” “Grand Theft Auto V” and “Batman Arkham: Origins”
10. “Rayman Legends” — Remember when Ubisoft made good video games? I do, and “Rayman” games were just that good. Top ten worthy, in fact. This is the last fantastic Ubi game from a bygone era, and it’s a damn shame no more “Rayman” games will ever come out.
9. “Peggle 2” — It’s a sequel to “Peggle” — maybe the best puzzle game of the 21st century. It doesn’t have as many characters or levels as the previous games (namely “Nights”), but it is no less colorful, joyful, and every -ful I can think of. Pure bliss.
8. “Tomb Raider” — Out of the three modern reboots, this is the best one. Square really let this IP slip through their fingers, and shame on them for fumbling such an easy and important bag. Lara is gaming royalty!
7. “Papers, Please” — If I taught a course on how to design a video game, and how to tie gameplay with narrative directly, I would pick this game to showcase. A simultaneous hilarious and heartbreaking look at America’s future by gazing into Europe’s past. A unique, one of a kind experience only fulfilled by gaming.
6. “Divekick” — The simpler a fighting game is to play and watch, the better it is in my opinion. And there are only two buttons in “Divekick!” Diving and kicking. It’s a wicked satire of inside jokes and FGC lingo, but it’s also a devilish multiplayer title.
5. “The Wolf Among Us” — God damn, do I wish they actually were working on a sequel to this game. The closest any game has come to imitating prestige TV and comics, with maybe the greatest bombshell ending I’ve ever seen. A true noir masterpiece of storytelling, character work, tough decisions, and art.
4. “The Last of Us” — What can I say about this game that hasn’t already been said, written about, adapted, or done as a stage play? We are going to look back at these characters, story, and score as being up there in the pinnacle of our industry. And no amount of HBO gloss can take that away from this title or its ending.
3. “Bioshock Infinite” — I don’t care what anybody says, this game still rips. It’s not as good as the first one, and parts of it do not hold up. But I had a hell of a time playing this, replaying it, discussing it, and soaking up as much criticism about it as humanly possible. A whopper of a flawed masterpiece.
2. “The Stanley Parable” and its demo — The demo for this game is its own thing entirely. With its own jokes and plot. A hysterical blend of surrealism, depression, satire, and British dry wit. This one will stick with me forever.
- “Gone Home” — The best indie game ever? The most impressed and awe struck I’ve ever been at playing a video game ever? One night in grad school, I sat and played the entire thing front to back, and became obsessed with how transcendent video games were going to become. I still don’t think anything has come close to touching this one.
2012
Honorable Mentions: “Mass Effect 3,” “Angry Birds Space,” “Angry Birds Star Wars,” “Darksiders 2,” “Max Payne 3,” “New Super Mario Bros. 2,” “Counter-Strike: GO,” “Pokemon Black and White 2,” “X-Com: Enemy Unknown” and “Hitman Absolution”
10. “ZombiU” — I did not play this until it came to other consoles as “Zombi,” but this was a surprise hit with me. A cool premise and a fun core loop akin to what roguelikes would later do much better. But this had the polish most indie devs could not pull off, and Ubi would never really make weird experiments like this outside of the later “Watchdogs.”
9. “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” — This is the last of the classic beloved “CoD” titles. The beginning of the end. Some people love this more than the first “Black Ops.” I don’t, but still I recognize this was some real quality shit back in the day. Great campaign, killer multiplayer, and the first time they would use the “Pick 10” system!
8. “Unfinished Swan” — Remember the “games as art” debate? This and the next game on my list definitely were the flag bearers for that ridiculous conversation (Ebert is dead wrong, of course they’re art). And tossing around black paint/goo to find what was hidden in the world is quite the minimalist paradise. A beauty and a fun one at that.
7. “Journey” — An even more beautiful game with an award winning score, “Journey” is an adventure puzzle thing that is hard to describe to people who have not played it. And running into another person, wordlessly dancing and cooperating, sliding around the sandy dunes, to only breathlessly say goodbye. It’s a stunner.
6. “Hotline Miami” — What a fucking soundtrack. All-time shit. The gameplay is good, if a little hard and repetitive, but the vibes are immaculate. The tone this sets is unmatched. You can feel the heat — it makes you humid with all of its coked up weirdness. I love using different masks to beat every level.
5. “Dishonored” — Stealth? World building? Style? What doesn’t this game have? I’d love to know what the gunfire is like because I cannot get myself to ever go in guns blazing. Or throw around those cool trap grenades that explode into razor wire. Or turn into a rat to devour people. Just blink around and steal money like a ghost. The ghost of Dunwall, that is.
4. “Frog Fractions” — How does one articulate a fever dream they once had? How can one put into words the most bizarre rug pull you both didn’t see coming and love how it ended up? This is like all of Adult Swim rolled up into one game, and it is so brilliantly disguised as an educational flash game for children. The cult around this franchise is so warranted — what an utter delight from end to end.
3. “Borderlands 2” — I’ll simply state that this is the greatest looter-shooter of all time. It’s one of the best co-op games, has terrific DLC, and it’s actually funny. Cringe, yes, but still funny. Fun is so underrated these days, and this had the juice, man. You just had to be there.
2. “Far Cry 3” — It’s so rare that I fully complete a game by accident, and then, after I’m done, say “wait that was it? I want more!” This perfected the template that Ubi and so many others would go on to copy and paste (enemy camps, towers to discover the map, etc.), but this did it first and best. Plus, Michael Mando as Vaas is more than a meme! It’s a great performance cut short.
- “The Walking Dead” — This sort of taught the gaming world that you could do a serious narrative, an emotional gut punch, and a choose your own adventure game that improved on the IP it was based on. A powerhouse set of performances coupled with iconic moments and wrenching deaths made every decision excruciating. It’s as memorable as its technical flaws were glaring, but it didn’t stop me from appreciating the highs it achieved.
Image Credit: “Frog Fractions”
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