Many of the games you listed were great. Antichamber and The Stanley Parable definitely deserve to be listed among the best games of the year - they're ingenious titles that raise the bar *very* highly for first-person 'puzzle' games. Hell, indie titles in general have been rocking it this year.
Meanwhile...well, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was kind of crap compared to the original, and was severely brought down by immersion-shattering cutscenes (*every* time you knocked out an enemy!), an astonishingly dumb plot, cardboard characters, awful boss fights, and a weak 'pick and ending' sequence. It was a fine game, but I don't see how it could get anything more than an 8 under those very noticeable flaws.
As for Bioshock Infinite, the gameplay was exceptionally lazy (even when compared with the original Bioshock, which already had weak 'floaty' bullet-sponge-filled combat), the characters were walking cliches with very little personality, the setting added nothing to the plot (for example, the whole civil rights movement stuff gets completely dropped by the third act), and the plot is one massive spiderweb of plot holes when you really think about it (and that's not even counting the fact that, as with the first Bioshock, other games did the same twists first. And better). I could see a 5 being justified. The game simply wasn't great in any particular way.
Anyway, I think you'll find that if you actually *play* these indie titles, you'll see why they get the highest praise from both gamers and reviewers. The previous console generation was completely out of fresh ideas, and their AAA titles suffered for it. Meanwhile, great indie titles are coming up with new (and genuinely great) ideas just about every single week of every year lately. I definitely know what I'd rather play.
@thatguy2001 This is the first and only game in this series on the 3DS. It's only the third Mario Party game on handhelds in eight years. Hell, it's only the second Mario Party game in six years.
It's not as if they are just pumping these out every 12 months (they haven't done that for about ten years now - they *were* milking the series on the Gamecube, however).
@uncha1n3d To be fair, in the earlier games, you rarely made runs *just* for weapons - you'd typically memorize weapon spots and plot your course through them as you went from objective to objective.
I enjoyed that - there was a certain 'risk/reward' charm in deciding whether to spend a few precious extra minutes swinging by the shop that had gasoline (or whatever), on your way to the next goal.
@Queuingreturns This guy apparently doesn't realise that the PC has far more highly rated exclusives in 2013 (including the two highest-rated games of the year) than any of its competitors.
@Toysoldier34 I'm guessing that you can skip most of the game's rooms/puzzles once you know your way around, especially if you work out how to get cubes from one puzzle to the next.
Still, you're missing out. The red gun was quite fun to play around with.
@Thyasianman Some people are finishing it in under 3 hours. I have personally spent 6 hours on it and haven't beaten it yet. It really depends on how much time you spend finding hidden rooms, and how often you get stuck on the puzzles. I do think it's worth it though, even if it isn't the longest game around.
@Tripwolf If you like these sorts of games, you really should look into picking up a handheld sometime. Chances are that there are enough worthwhile games on them to completely change your mind about those systems.
I'm a huge fan of the game already (and I'll probably play it for as long as it stays supported), but I think this is a fair review. It's a bit of a flawed game, but one that will hopefully find a solid fanbase in those who value story and atmophere over exciting combat and pvp.
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