Well, after a week in vacation, time for me to vote for 2013.
I haven't played GTA5, The Last of Us or Black Flag (the first two because there weren't available on PC, the second because I felt it was a sidestep from the actual franchise), so they're out of my ranking despite their possible qualities.
So, what do we have in this year ?
Tomb Raider, which was a surprise for me : I never found the original serie that good to begin with, and a reboot is risky. But it actually worked. Too linear and trying too hard for the actions sequences, but Lara is actually genuinely interesting as a character and she's the pivot of the entire game. Finding artifacts is both in tune with the Tomb Raider theme and helps giving context, which make chasing them relevant and not just a 100 % completionist obligation. All in all, a surprisingly good game.
Bioshock Infinite : if there ever was a dualistic game, it's this one. The "game" aspect, let's be frank, is garbage. The action is boring, the weapons forgettable, the linearity absolute, the consolization atrocious. As a game, it's a failure.
But the narrative ? Oh my, the story is one of the very best, in its depth and details and complexity, of the entire video game history. Characters are fantastic, Elizabeth is as good as the hype painted her. The ending is just incredible.
So it's a story masterpiece, and I carefully chose that word, slapped on a mediocre game. Overall flawed, but still very memorable.
Far Cry 3 : Blood Dragon : I can't really consider it a serious contender due to its hyper nature and very short length, but it's so utterly silly and hilarious I can't help to give it points and an honorable mention. It's just pure comedy gold with 80's references built into the design.
Europa Universalis IV is obviously a noticeable challenger. A slick and the most famous Paradox title, I've spent a ton of time playing it. It would be a no-brainer as winner if it were an improved EU3, but I don't really like the cornerstone of the entire design (mana points as main resources) and I found that the mandatory design changes added in patches actually DEcrease the quality of the game, through very artificial mechanism and massive feature bloat.
Saint Rows IV : I never followed the serie, so I played this one completely out of the blue, because I heard it was fun. And oh boy it was. A completely over-the-top, silly and parodic GTA, with surprisingly high productions value and a LARGE amount of content. It plays on many levels, FPS and super-hero and driving game, and major change in style and gameplay integrated for the character-specific missions on top of that. It's relentlessly funny, parodying everything (mainly GTA and Mass Effect, but also itself) in a neverending string of comical situations, but is also pretty slick as a game, surprisingly self-consistent for such an humorous game, and even somewhat smart and veering on satire. It's also not just jokes and laughes, there is a very real game behind it, with good gameplay. Definitely a blast.
Total War : Rome II is a mixed bag. It was simply a disaster at release, and got deservedly terrible reviews. Years later, with expansions and patches, it's actually become a pretty good game. Still much less polished than Shogun II and with a bad UI and some boring/broken/underused core mechanisms (like politics), but able to really grips you. It also gets bonus point for being being pretty historical and the sheer scale and ambition.
As a winner, I'm going to nominate Saint Rows IV. It's maybe not be the kind which fit my style the best, but it combines just so many things done right and is so hilarious I have to give it its due.
