Winner: Fez
The best puzzle games have the ability to make the player feel inversely smart and stupid. Fez takes this further than any game we’ve ever played, giving us the feeling of being both cackling genius and babbling idiot within minutes of each other. It’s an absolute triumph in creating something new both in terms of its platforming and its puzzle solving; blending together genres in ways we’ve never seen.
It’s about opening doors, exploring, deciphering languages, and dipping your toe into the well of insanity just enough to hopefully come out with the knowledge needed to open one more door, to get one more cube. We’re sure some will be turned off by the dense, unorthodox style – it’s absolutely not for everyone – but we’re in love, and expect to spend many more hours unraveling the game’s secrets.
Runner-up: The Walking Dead: A New Day
Read The Walking Dead game review.
Telltale did a fantastic job of turning The Walking Dead into a videogame, trumping its attempts at adapting Jurassic Park and Back to the Future handily. The mix of old-school puzzle solving and action-based quick-time events spoke perfectly to the source material, creating an absurdly tense, emotional experience that blindsided us completely. If it can keep up the pace with future episodes The Walking Dead could be one of the developer's best, and we're really, really hoping that ends up being the case. We're also hoping we eventually get to kill that one guy - if you played the game you know exactly who we're talking about.
