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For me, this was the year the 3DS became my favorite handheld system. Period. I said pretty early on that Fire Emblem: Awakening would probably be my game of the year, and it still is. Beyond that, listing off my other favorites from the 3DS this year would mostly just be me going through a list of games i played on the 3DS this year; everything was just so good. This was also the year i finally built a new PC, so i spent a lot of time catching up on various PC games from the last few years i missed out on. X3: Albion Prelude was quite a revelation, as was Amnesia: The Dark Descent. (Even if i wussed out after a few hours and have yet to continue.) I also absolutely loved playing through Teleglitch and FTL. Addendum: Stanley Parable is also an awesome thing.

You can find copies of the localized versions of Akai Katana for pretty cheap, and it's a really fantastic game. Cave did just absolutely tons and tons of stuff on the 360, only a few of them got released outside of Japan. PAL regions got one of the DoDonPachi games, both PAL/NA got Deathsmiles and Akai Katana and a couple random other things, NA actually got the second Deathsmiles as a weird unlocalized digital-only release. Treasure and G.Rev both also did a lot of weird stuff exclusively for the 360. The first thing Treasure did was port Ikaruga to XBLA. Not as exciting as the other things, since Ikaruga's available in a lot of places and a version of the XBLA port is now even coming to Steam. (Unfortunately, the XBLA version is a little thin on features, the GC release is still probably the best version of the game.) Radiant Silvergun being ported to XBLA was way more exciting, by both being more or less the definitive version of the game, and the earlier releases being incredibly rare. Then the last thing they did was, depending on how you count, the 3rd or 4th Bangai-O game. (As it's an actual exclusive, I'd love to say it's awesome, but i think it might actually be the weakest game in that series. The stages are puzzle-like to a fault, and the game is just savagely difficult, even for me.) G.Rev, on the other hand, put out a pretty rad and underappreciated shmup called Strania: The Stella Machina on XBLA, and they also put out the Senko no Ronde games exclusively on the 360. (Ubisoft localized the first one with a terrible new title, but left the game largely intact. It's dirt cheap to pick up because nobody bought it and critics slammed it. I really love it though, i think it's awesome. If anybody's into anything like Virtual On, they'd definitely be into it.) Speaking of Virtual On, a bunch of those games were remade for the 360, but only Oratorio Tangram was released worldwide. (Which is maybe fine, because Oratorio Tangram is the best one, and its XBLA release is its best version.)

So this is an unfortunate one, because you can't play this game anymore. Still, for me, it was a defining 360 game: Chromehounds. So how about a massive faction and clan-based multiplayer metagame mech sim? (WIth gameplay at the far end of slow, lumbering machines.) You join your squad, your squad joins a faction, and you fight across nodes on a metagame map where each node represents a unique map to fight over. There are loosely defined roles, like snipers and heavy gunners and scouts and commanders. (Backed by an incredibly elaborate mech building system where you're assembling almost lego-like contstructs of support struts and armor panels and weapons/engines/fuel tanks/etc, each piece having its own health bar and consequences for failing.) You go find a match on your faction's frontlines, and you're out there trying to either destroy the enemy's base or the entire enemy team. You capture commuications towers that each have a certain range, and only in that range can you voice chat with your team, requiring multiple towers with contiguous communication fields for long-range communication. (It's been a long time, but i think the commander's gear could also see, on their personal map, any enemies within the contiguous communication field controlled by their team.) This whole system led to things like an enemy scout being able to maneuver behind your lines and steal a tower to break communication between a forward group and a defending group on your team, for example. You might also see scouts and commanders calling out map locations of enemies, for a heavy gunner to then do some simple head calculations based on their personal map so they can line-up their range finder for some long-range artillery bombardment. Chromehounds was amazing... For about a year. It had some pretty massive balance problems stemming partly from its very free-form builds and moreso from people figuring out that heavy gunners could do just as well on the front lines. The introduction of the Xbox Live party system also proved ruinous for all of its communication-based game systems. Finally, people eventually figured out bugs that let them ignore things like the load limit in the mech lab and it was pretty much over. Sega shut down the dedicated servers for the game a few years ago, and so with the exception of a tiny, boring tutorial campaign, you cannot play Chromehounds anymore. Even if it got a sequel, with things like Skype being so commonly used these days, it's a game that couldn't work anymore. From's later Armored Core V games adopted a lot of the metagame and teamwork wackiness of Chromehounds, but AC is obviously a much, much faster paced game. There is far less of the incredibly deliberate, cautious scouting and strategy that defined Chromehounds in its prime. (ACV also kind of sucks. Verdict Day is pretty awesome though.)

Yeah, that's pretty much the case. No, it did not.

Well, then Alan Wake? I did play Alan Wake when it was 360 exclusive. That's really the story of 360 exclusivity though, especially if you look to a lot of those indie games like Braid and Castle Crashers. They were exclusive to the 360 for anywhere between six months up to a couple years, and then they eventually ended up on other platforms too. (It certainly can be argued that this is not actually a bad thing for Microsoft or for the developers they work with, it just makes it hard to pin down what counts as an exclusive.) How about this one: Ace Combat 6, which is actually exclusive and is a pretty fantastic flight combat game with a few caveats. (Mainly that its multiplayer is hacked up into tons of small DLC packs. Most of it was inessential and largely cosmetic, some of it was definitely not.) The game is incredibly beautiful though, and the campaign is awesome; massive, expansive battles and an amusingly overwrought and self-serious narrative set in that franchise's "strangereal" alternate-Earth fiction. (I think AC6 was the last game set in that universe before they abandoned it for real-world locales.) If anybody's never played an AC game before, AC6 is actually a pretty great one to start with. It has a few good accessibility concessions, like high-g turns, without just full-on jumping the shark and doing QTE stuff like the later Assault Horizon games did. (By extension, if all you've played is the Assault Horizon games, you should check out AC6.) AC6 is also responsible for this thing existing for the 360.

So Bravely Default is apparently out in Europe in a few days, the critical response is quite positive, but it won't be out in North America until February. It was also just confirmed that Bravely Default will be getting a sequel. In other 3DS-related news, the developer behind Rune Factory 4 apparently just closed down, which is a sad turn of events. RF4 is an excellent, excellent game, it's unfortunate that it will end up being that team's last. I had picked it up when it was new, but kind of put it on the back burner almost right away. I've been spending more time with it again, and it's really just a fantastic game. It tries to be so many different things all at once and succeeds quite admirably.

Halo's entire run on the 360 has been excellent, i think. I put a ton of time into 4 over the course of a few months when it came out and ultimately concluded that, while i really don't like a lot of what comprises the stamp 343 tried to put on it, the core of the game was intact and played incredibly well. (A lot better than Reach, i'd say.) Nevermind that 4 is also an incredibly, implausibly beautiful game. Holy shit, really getting some mileage out of that hardware. One of the most interesting things about the 360 to me, personally, is the weirdly large array of exclusive 2D shooters it ended up with. I mean, and for every one that somehow ended up being released in the west, there were three or more that stayed in Japan. Luckily, some of the ones that did find their way out over here are actually really, really fantastic. (No... Not... No... No Otomedius. No. Konami, what did you do to Gradius. Why. Why.) I would argue that Cave's is the best non-import 2d shooter on the 360.

I'll start adding to this thread: For whatever various reasons, it ended up that i've written a lot of words about Dead Rising in a bunch of different threads over the last few weeks, but it's relevant here too. Blue Castle/Capcom Vancouver's Dead Rising 2 and all of its tangent products went multiplatform, but with the exception of a wildly different and absolutely butchered Wii-port, the original Dead Rising has remained on the 360, so it's absolutely one of the 360's most essential exclusive games. (Certainly, at the very least, one of my favorite games on the system.) I love the tone and the campy Romero-imitative social commentary, i love the eagerly stupid and creative applications of every conceivable object you might try to defend yourself with in a mall - if that mall was swarming with zombies. I love the way the clock is used, forcing you to make choices about who to leave behind, which supplies you need, and where you most need to be. That time pressure also makes you treat the crowds of zombies as a environmental obstacle instead of a horde of enemies to be slain, it's a pretty unique dynamic that not a lot of other zombie games really have. I appreciate that the game is challenging enough that it forces you to sometimes just start over and tackle the campaign from different angles, exploring its large, sometimes branching quest paths. Additionally, that you're not simply starting over fresh with only knowledge gained, but also retaining mechanical character progression, really emboldens you to take more risks and try to complete more tasks. NPC's that you lost and tasks that you failed start falling into place, it's immensely rewarding. The game also still looks great, it's built on a rock solid foundation and filled with high resolution art in service of locations that are filled with small, interesting details. (Dead Rising 2 may have larger crowds, but i think its environments suffer quite a bit.) The game was also actually a great early application of the achievement system, there's some in that first Dead Rising that are really challenging and fun trying to track down. Frank's camera is awesome too, it's a fun mechanic, and it's clever about how it quietly eggs you on to play Frank like a smarmy opportunist. I can't understand why it hasn't been employed more frequently in the Blue Castle/Capcom Vancouver sequels. Unfortunately, Dead Rising's control is pretty awkward and terrible, and it doesn't come across like it's in service of pacing the gameplay like the control in RE4 does. It's just really, really awkward. The survivor AI can also be infamously difficult to deal with, but there's really a simple trick that nobody really ever seems to figure out. Set a waypoint at where you want them to go, so that when you go fish them out of a sea of zombies they won't just stand by your side and get munched on again. All of those seemingly frustrating rescue missions will flow much more easily. Dead Rising 2 pretty much fixes the control, expands on item crafting dramatically, and generally has a much more open environment, but i like the characters and the locations of the first game much more. I'm also pretty confident in saying that it's actually a better looking game than its sequel, and i think the camera is a much more interesting device for earning experience.

It's the Dreamcast of Nintendo consoles.

Apparently it did, but the expanded-remake/sequel, Trouble in Paradise, stayed on the 360. Rare rightly gets a lot of shit for Perfect Dark Zero, it's a terrible game, but mostly everything else they did for the 360 was wonderful. Viva Pinata and Nuts & Bolts are both absolutely terrific games, and i'll even argue for Kameo being a pretty solid and enjoyable Zelda-like adventure game. None of those games really finding an audience, despite some pretty strong marketing pushes from Microsoft, is one of the sadder stories of the 360.

DEPRESSING CORRECTIONS: Gears of War came to PC, but hey, its sequels didn't. The big, awful third-person Bionic Commando reboot came to everything. Deadly Premonition was exclusive to the 360 only outside of Japan, and still ended up later coming to both Steam and the PS3. (With extra stuff!) Fable 3 ended up on the PC, but Fable 2 didn't, and Fable 2's the best one! But hey! That Crackdown, both of those stayed exclusive, and that first one is pretty good. (That sequel, not so much.) Crackdown didn't invent the open-world superhero(supervillain?) game, but it certainly popularized it.

I also played Gone Home very recently and quite liked it, but i definitely don't think i feel as strongly about it as some others do. (It certainly seems to have ended up as a thing where people are incredibly polarized about it.) It is quite a marvelously constructed little thing though, i have a lot of appreciation for how it lays the pieces of its narrative out before you. I was impressed with how well it succeeded in feeling like a carefully plotted narrative, when it comes out of me randomly clicking on things in a largely open environment. Thought the story was quite sweet, enjoyed the pieces of the 90's nostalgia that lined up with my personal experiences of the decade, and i loved having such a fully realized place to just poke around in. Really enjoyed going through the commentary mode after finishing, i love that kind of stuff and i wish more games would do it.

F-Zero GX Not to mention that the Trilogy version of the first Metroid Prime is missing a ton of visual effects, trading it all for an ugly light bloom effect.

A lot of the media integration in these new consoles is so completely US-centric, it's created a lot of weird exceptions and functionality gaps for canadian users. At least europeans (sometimes) get their own relevant apps.

The 1 million sales that Microsoft was touting was also worldwide, while the 1 million sales that Sony was touting was just North America, since it hadn't launched anywhere else yet. Still, 1 million out of the gate for the XBO isn't anything to dismiss. Clearly, people are excited to have new hardware, both systems are selling really well. (I wonder how the Wii U will do this holiday season.) On the topic of early adoption: I've always just seen it as wanting to be in on the newness of a new thing. Part of the zeitgeist. I've bought the GBA, the DS, the PSP, and the 3DS all on their launch days. (The PSP actually had a really, really incredible launch line-up, the 3DS and the DS were probably equally terrible.) It was pretty clear in advance that the 3DS wasn't going to be very good out of the gate, but i had sort of built up that personal tradition with Nintendo handhelds and wanted to be there from the start. I wanted to see the 3D screen and all of the other weird, dumb stuff NIntendo would do with the hardware.

I went back and 100%'d it too, and i'm thinking about doing a hard run. (I wish Nintendo wouldn't lock their hard difficulties up as post-game unlocks. ALBW is not a game where i felt the default difficulty was too easy, but the original Wind Waker definitely was one, for example.)

Really loving Tone Control, so far. I don't think i have a whole lot to add to the conversation here, i just want to say that, as a big fan of Monolith's games, it was a huge treat hearing the stories shared in the podcast. Well, i can add one thing. I always felt like there was a bit of a weird narrative subversion happening in FEAR. The way it sets you up as the silent protagonist with no identity or personality, but then starts pulling you deep into the convoluted threads of the of the story? I mean, the way silent protagonists are usually used to let the player fill the gaps, which instantly makes you assume, specifically on your part, the role of an outsider to the story. When FEAR subverts that, the way FEAR subverts that, i always thought it was kind of cool. (Even if it was, apparently, possibly accidental.)

It's been over ten years since F-Zero GX came out. It is a Nintendo series that really, really needs a new entry.

The 360 is eight years old, the PS3 and Wii are both 7 years old. Steam is technically ten years old, but really only became a thing in earnest with the release of HL2 9 years ago. Flip the page, the PS4 is in stores, the XBO is ready to launch, two new handhelds are out in the wild and mostly established, and Valve's making some pretty wild promises about the future of Steam. (There's also that Ouya thing, that's the most important one.) We're clearly in the midst of another generational shift in gaming. So what about the generation we're exiting from? In this last decade we've seen the rise of digital distribution and the indie scene, the rise of the smart phone, exploration of new ways of interfacing with games, the rise of new business models and internet integration. We've also seen old publishers struggle to remain viable and relevant, and there are also many questions left up in the air about the ethics of some of these new business models, and the permanence of these new digital libraries. How do you feel about all of it? What's on your mind about what we've come from and where things are going? Can you even remember what PC gaming was like without Steam? When was the last time you had to personally seek out a patch? Do you still remember the original blades OS on the 360 and how much easier it was to navigate the XBL marketplace? (Goddammit Microsoft, why did you remove sorting options?)

I am done. Gave up on a few of the mini-games, so i was three heart pieces short of a complete save. Got everything else though. I think this is the best Zelda game i've played since Wind Waker. Really, really great game, i think. It's such a weird balance Nintendo struck with this one, being so reverent to LTTP, but with a few key changes in the formula making it feel like a distinctly new thing. (Pretty relevant to what the Thumbs were talking about on this week's podcast.) The... The environments feel smaller than they did in LTTP though. I don't know if that's just the result of having more of it open earlier on, or maybe the camera is zoomed in closer in ALBW, or something. I think there also might be fewer enemies populating the ALBW dungeons than LTTP had.

The GBA versions of the Ace Attorney games were never released outside of Japan. The first three DS games are updated remakes of those with some new content. AA4 and the Investigations games were built specifically for the DS. (The second Investigations game is the only DS game that wasn't localized, which is a shame, people seem to think it's pretty good.) And now AA5 is out on the 3DS, and apparently we're getting the Layton/Ace Attorney crossover too.

The Treacherous Tower isn't a pain to do if you're not completely terrible at the game, but it makes you do the advanced course twice to upgrade your bug net and your lamp one at a time. The other mini-games, egh.

Worst thing about Eternal Darkness: If the game actually starts locking up on you, the error screen it shows you is indistinguishable from one of the ones it uses to fake you out. (The game itself isn't prone to crashes; my first gamecube had a bad, clicky disc drive that sometimes gave disc-read errors on certain games.) That game had a lot of neat stuff going on though, it wasn't just the sanity system. For one, It had pretty fantastic control as far as pre-RE4 fixed-perspective survival horror games go, it even had a lock-on system that enabled limb-specific attacks. It also had a really cool magic system and that ambitious effort to tell a story across millennia with multiple main characters. Eternal Darkness is a rad game.

Man, that Ice Dungeon, that was pretty amazing.

The Sega/Atlus story is quite a nice one, it implies a surprisingly healthy perspective from Sega concerning their Atlus acquisition. At the very least, a brilliant bit of PR, because pretty much exactly the things that needed to be said were said. Also, i don't think Jet Set Radio was ever very good.