Finding a needle in a haystack.
If you ask the common gamer how this year was for gaming, you’ll probably get the same reaction. “There were a lot of bad games.” “2013 sucked for games.” “2013 had a lot of bad games.” To the common gamer, finding a good game was like finding a needle in a haystack.
And unfortunately, these gamers were content with the bad games they played. One after another, the common gamer would continue to go no further from the surface, accepting the games the mainstream wanted them to play. Helpless, the common gamer succumbed, seeing no hope for the year.
We are not common gamers.
We are the gamers who are willing to wade through the waters to find the light at the end. We never accept when someone tells us that we can’t have good games. It’s in our blood. Separated by continents, oceans, and cultures, it is the bond that ties us together.
We know there will always be garbage. Every year has its batch of rotten apples. But it’s the ability to look past the rotten cores that separates all of us from the common gamer.
We are the ones who can find that needle in a haystack. But we don’t stop there. We keep going until our one needle becomes many, and our one diamond in the rough becomes a giant cart full of diamonds, like a cherry on top of the world’s best sundae.
And not one of those manufactured maraschino cherries—those are crap. I’m talking about real cherries, ones that come from Traverse City.
So eat that sundae and grab the needle. Go past day one and join the ranks of the wonderful. Look beyond and see your true awakening. Tear away the shackles of a stale parable and rise toward our destinies.
2013 didn’t suck for games. Nay, 2013 was a good year, one the uncommon gamer can be proud of.
Welcome to the 2nd Annual oprainfall Video Game Awards. As with last year, this is a three-part awards presentation that goes from now until Friday, revealing our picks from 21 categories spanning game aesthetics, characters, consoles, and PC, all leading up to our pick for Game of the Year. In addition, we added a new category specifically for you, the readers of this site. Over the past few weeks, you have voted for your own Game of the Year. Tomorrow, we will reveal the winner of that process.
Today, however, we bring awards for characters and begin the console awards. Just like last year, all nominees for console awards are exclusives to the console. However, a game may be nominated for a specific console if it was deemed better on that system than on any others. All other games released on multiple consoles will be a part of the Multiplatform category. An exception was made for one category, but we’ll get to that on Friday.
And, of course, with everything that we do that involves staff picks, there will be some spoilers. You have been warned!
