GTA, how I’ve missed you. We’ve suffered numerous instalments of your pretenders since we last set foot in Liberty City, but they just weren’t the same.
I feel like I’m in a minority in standing by my high opinion of GTA IV, a game I felt certainly had flaws but did more than enough to justify the acclaim. Honestly, if they patched out the inane and annoying friendship system, I’d have no reservations about awarding that game a perfect score. Did it have as much to do as San Andreas? No, but it had different ambitions and fulfilled them admirably.
GTA V, meanwhile, strikes a balance that seems to have achieved the feat of pleasing everyone. It boasts the storytelling ambitions of IV – while arguably doing it better – and offers a ridiculous amount of content. It looks gorgeous, even on outdated hardware. Much credit, too, for the seamless character switching in an open-world game, which is an achievement both technically and narratively. I expect that to be much imitated in a genre that frequently follows the path forged by this series.
So how does Rockstar top this? Oh, I think you know.
A Zelda sequel just seems weird. Sure, Majora’s Mask technically takes place directly after Ocarina of Time and the Links in the first two games are the same incarnation, but to use the same map, the same world, even the same visual style? What’s next? A new one every year?
Possibly my surprise of the year. What a hopeless PR campaign led me to suspect would be a QTE-laden Uncharted knock-off instead was a thoroughly enjoyable open-world adventure that I felt, in its platforming and exploration, actually outdid its inspiration. But I was right about it being QTE-laden.
I’m confident that The Last of Us will be sweeping up more than its share of awards this season, so understand that this isn’t an attempt to be contrary. If I’m criticising BioShock Infinite for propping up an ambitious storyline with flawed gameplay, it’s only fair that the current darling of Naughty Dog’s ‘dedicated’ fan base gets the same treatment. The Last of Us suffers from gunplay that hasn’t really improved since Uncharted, occasionally frustrating stealth mechanics, a poor final act, and generally fell foul of my boredom with the whole zombie thing.
I take it as an indication of the quality of 2013’s games that BioShock Infinite, a game that seemed a shoo-in for copious awards come this point in the year, now looks likely to be frequently overlooked. I’m kind of the same now that the lustre has worn off and the rough edges – prosaic shooting, an occasionally annoying AI companion, bullet sponge enemies, 
I’d been disappointed by my returns to Pokémon since what I perceive to be its heyday in the late 90s. It’s a series whose advancements between iterations had been conservative by even Nintendo’s standards, with everything from its templated story to the designs of its new Pokémon exhibiting diminishing returns.