Tag: Best of 2013 »

You're the best around, nothing's gonna ever keep you down!

On This Episode:

Carter and a couple of regulars to the show discuss their top 3 games of the past year that they thought were must-plays.

Episode Cast:

Host: Carter Dotson

Co-Host: Brett Nolan, AppAddict.net

Co-Host: Rob Rich, 148Apps

Music:

• "Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)" by The Eternal - Download on iTunes here:

  



• "Nanocarp" by The Eternal

How to Listen:

• Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

  

• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.


• Listen Here: [powerpress]

Apps From This Episode:

Most developers get one masterpiece. One magnum opus that they get to unleash on to the world.

Simogo released two in 2013 alone.

Both Year Walk and Device 6 were absolutely amazing experiences, not just games, and so different from almost everything else this year.

Part of what made them stand out was just how emotional they were: Year Walk used limited dialogue and details to make players care about what was happening in the world by experiencing and being frightened by it for themselves. Device 6 was a lot more wordy as a very book-esque experience, sure, but it managed to get players engrossed in a mysterious universe while slowly unwrapping everything that was going on.

Both games played with their fictional aspects: Year Walk made full use of its companion app to complement the game and eventually have a profound effect on it. Its metafiction proved to be just as much of a psychological dance as the game itself. Device 6 had direct commentary on games, rating systems, and trying to get currency to buy things that served as the overlay to the experience. But it also tried and succeeded at being like reading a book that played with the very nature of text layouts and reading to create an unsettling universe.

There are a lot of apps that were released in 2013, and it's easy for some of the great ones to fall through the cracks. 148Apps' staff has gotten together to discuss some of our favorite apps of the past year that you might not have heard of. These are our favorite underappreciated apps of 2013.

Heyday

The tagline for Heyday is "Journaling Reimagined," and that's pretty apt. The app will run in the background on iOS 7 devices and track where you go; matching those GPS coordinates up with business locations and with photos you take. The app then presents you with a detailed map and list of locations you have been each day. After a couple weeks of use, it's fun to look back and see where you've been and what you've done; all gathered automatically. - Jeff Scott

Rando

Rando is the photo sharing app that wanted to do everything different than Instagram, to even having circular photos rather than square ones. It was the anti-social network, but there was something cool about getting a photo that no one else got, and sharing photos just for the sake of sharing a cool, random photo; not to try and get likes for it. - Carter Dotson

Debt Down

Debt Down is one of those apps that I wish I didn't need to bother with, but I'm very glad to have it around. It truly does help me to visualize my debt - and my progress in getting rid of it - very easily. I only wish I'd been able to use it sooner! - Rob Rich

Candy Crush Saga would be perhaps an ill-fitting choice for the game of 2013: it was hardly the "best" game of the year by traditional "Game of the Year" metrics, and it didn't even release in 2013. But Candy Crush Saga was still the game that defined mobile gaming in 2013.

There weren't many games that were the cultural phenomenon that Candy Crush Saga was: walk down the aisle of an airplane and there was always someone on a tablet or phone matching fruits around. It was the one mobile game that friends who never talked about mobile gaming would talk about. And it wasn't just casual gamers: anyone who's friends with Touch Arcade editor Eli Hodapp on Facebook suffered the wrath of his lives requests for a while there.

The thing that was most fascinating about Candy Crush Saga, though? Did anyone really have an unequivocal, gushing love for it? Whenever the game would be brought up, there was always some degree of resentment toward it for being so addictive, in the sense that people just could not stop playing, paying, and bugging their Facebook friends with requests.

It's easy to look at mobile and see it as a wasteland for content; particularly with all the casual, free-to-play games, and especially the ones that seem to de-emphasize actual gameplay in favor of stronger monetization. That's only if you're not paying attention. Serious, core games - some even free-to-play - had a great year on iOS.

Oceanhorn was hyped for a good reason: it was beautiful and ambitious. That ambition didn't entirely pay off in my opinion, but for the game to have succeeded financially is a huge step forward for gaming on mobile.

It also felt like the barriers between mobile and PC/console games started to blur a bit. Frozen Synapse, Mode 7's highly acclaimed PC strategy game, landed on iPad at last. Limbo received an excellent port. Leviathan: Warships brought cross-platform online play - and the best trailer of the year. Space Hulk was not perfect, but it made for an exceptional transition.

But perhaps few did it as spectacularly as XCOM: Enemy Unknown. That game proved that it was possible to take a massive console and PC title - a fantastic modern take on one of the greatest strategy games of all time - and put it on mobile without losing any of the experience. Firaxis also absolutely stuck the landing with Sid Meier's Ace Patrol and its Pacific Skies followup; original games that went to PC later.

It's easy to list off the best games of 2013, and often such lists contain a lot of crosstalk between different publications. So this year, instead of just giving off another similar list of the best games of the year, our staff has decided to talk about their favorite games of the year that might not have been the best sellers or the most popular. In no particular order, this is our list of some of our favorite under-appreciated games of 2013.

Yushino

This was the one game that I kept coming back to on a nearly-daily basis. The mix of addition and Scrabble is something that appeals to my former life when I studied mathematics. It rewards pattern recognition, and smart play, rather than cheap obscure word usage. That I'm also really good at it doesn't hurt. - Carter Dotson

Space Agency

Space Agency is an amazingly fun game for those of us who have watched the space program since, well, forever. While it's a very lightweight simulation of a space program, it does require a fair bit of strategy, timing, and even a bit of luck. The challenges it presents have players going from the extremes of keeping a spacecraft in the air for a few seconds to multi-planet orbit missions where space station pieces are swapped out. All presented in bite-sized, mobile-optimized gameplay for space geeks like me. - Jeff Scott