GOTY | Close But No Cigar

When I built my game of the year list, I went down the line and made a list of every game I’ve played that came out this year. There were a few games that just bare­ly didn’t make the list and I just want­ed to give a quick shout-out to them before I start out on my offi­cial top-ten of the year.

Dead Space 3:

This one not mak­ing the list sur­prised even me, but there have been some amaz­ing games this year. While I enjoyed Dead Space 3 and would cer­tain­ly not con­sid­er it bad, the fact that the real end­ing of the game came out as paid DLC burnt me to the point of exclud­ing this game from my top-ten this year. Still go play this one if you haven’t, it does a great job of pro­vid­ing a co-op option, with­out forc­ing it on you.

The Cave:

There was a lot about this game that was incred­i­bly clever and I had quite a bit of fun play­ing through this with a friend. The tales of each char­ac­ter were also delight­ful­ly dark and were fun to expe­ri­ence. It was a lit­tle frus­trat­ing that there are exact­ly enough char­ac­ters that you need to play through it three times with the third using two char­ac­ters you’ve already used before. In the end, this didn’t make it not because I didn’t like it, but because I like the oth­er ten games better.

The Leg­end of Zel­da: The Wind Wak­er HD:

Cer­tain­ly one of the best games released this year. The rea­son I decid­ed against putting this one on the main list, was because it is an HD remake. Sure, there are some added fea­tures, but it’s not enough to jus­ti­fy this game steal­ing the spot of some­thing that orig­i­nal­ly came out this year. Still, it deserves some props for being a pret­ty amaz­ing game, so go out and get it if you haven’t already.

Grand Theft Auto V:

Yeah, I haven’t actu­al­ly played this one yet. I’m sure it’s amaz­ing, and that’s why I’m acknowl­edg­ing that now, but I can’t include some­thing I haven’t played on my top-ten.

Plants Vs. Zom­bies 2: It’s About Time:

This iOS game did its very best to make a game where micro-trans­ac­tions exist­ed, but weren’t inhibit­ing to the game­play expe­ri­ence. I com­mend their effort, but for me I still can’t get past it. There is a cer­tain point where the game wants you to pay it mon­ey and makes it less fun to try to pry that moolah away from you. I appre­ci­ate the effort, but it is not quite enough to land you on my top-ten games list.