Andy Plays Games presents... Ten Videogames From 2013 Listed In Order Of Subjective Goodness

It's time for Game of the Year! There are games I played this year! I quite liked them! I liked them so much I arranged them in a kind of list, and wrote a paragraph about why I liked them so much! But first things first! I need to qualify some stuff! Okay, so, this is only best of list of the games I actually played. I don't own any of them fancy PlayStation consoles, so none of them are on the list. There's a Wii U in my house, but it ain't mine - Super Mario 3D World would probably have made this list otherwise! I also only list games I've played substantially. I was going to put Risk of Rain on this list because it's fantastic and the soundtrack is phenomenal, but I've barely unlocked two classes and longevity is important when evaluating Roguelikes. I love the cut of Saints Row IV's gib, but I've not played much more than a few tutorials. I also don't have a next-gen system, but I'll be honest, none of their games are any good eh? Eh? New consoles, amirite? Crap games, eh? Haha, what fresh material. Okay then, onto the list!

Thur: The Durk Wurld

Thor: The Dark World may not have been a very good movie. As far as act structures, assemblage, pacing, and general flow, it may well be the least technically proficient film of the year, at least story-wise. As something quite else though, The Dark World stands up as possibly the most faithfully "comic"-esque comic book film ever made.

What the first Thor film had in passing, The Dark World has in spades. The magical realm of Asgard, seen as mere bookends for an Avengers-preparing second act, has been expanded into a gigantic, sprawling medieval-meets-sci-fi-meets-Wonderland kingdom. The technology is utterly bizarre, with stone spaceships and space guns and space bazookas (guh?) and all kinds of bizarre quasi-mythological imagery setting the stage for more hammy, classical over-acting from the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, and Anthony Hopkins (who I frequently forget isn't Jeff Bridges when not talking. Oh, Jeff Bridges is in this fi- oh right it's Anthony Hopkins. I don't know why I think that. I also don't know why I thought Tom Hiddleston's name was Tom Middleton).

How "Man of Steel" Made Being Alive Painful (And Other Observations)

Man of Steel made my being alive painful. While watching Man of Steel, the visual and aural bombardment - the speed, the jerkiness, the brightness and the screeching - made existence a chore. I refer explicitly, mind, to the last fifty or so minutes of the movie, the so-called "climax," in which the "characters" engaged in "fights". These scenes (if one is willing to afford them such a status) made me motionsick, and gave me a pounding headache. But it is the insult to my intelligence that truly made me wretch.