This month we’re celebrating Virtual Bastion’s 5-year anniversary by sharing our favorite memories of the site, blogging, gaming, and our online friendships. Join us as we take a trip down memory lane!

Although Hatm0nster, The Duck, and I formed “United We Game” with a singular goal in mind — to help small game bloggers reach a wider audiences — our primary focus was (and will always be) on video games. We’ve each incorporated games and gaming into our lives in different ways, and as part of establishing not only UWG’s identity but also our own individual personas, many of our early posts consisted of personal anecdotes about the games we had played, the games we had loved, and sometimes, the games we didn’t like. These articles didn’t necessarily spotlight the games we were actually playing in 2013 or releases from the year. Sure, we each had our own 2013 favorites — The Duck enjoyed Pikmin 3 and Rayman Legends; I was enamored with Grand Theft Auto V; and Hatm0nster took a liking to Bioshock Infinite, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and the all-new Tomb Raider — and such games certainly informed some of our later output on the site. When starting out however, since we wanted to keep the community at-large in mind, we couldn’t necessarily discuss together gaming’s “flavor of the week,” because not everyone had played the latest releases. But with the way blogging works, it was inevitable that windows into our own gaming pasts would be opened. With the success of these articles, we invited our contributors to share similar insights into their own personal gaming histories and preferences. And boy, did we ever end up with some fun and fantastic stories! Let’s travel back and revisit the games we discussed in 2013. 

Hatm0nster kicked off the games-discussion trend nearly from the start with his examination of the “City Escape” level from Sonic Adventure 2. 

• Stage Complete: City Escape

From there, we cascaded head first into discussions involving favorite games of all sorts

• Comparing “Jak and Daxter” and “Ratchet and Clank”: Two Series Everyone Must Play by The Duck of Indeed
• Top 5 Most-Memorable Sly Cooper Bosses by Hatm0nster
• Majora’s Mask: The Greatest of the Oddball Zeldas by Hatm0nster
• There’s Always Time for Animal Crossing by Hatm0nster

We had loads of fun reviewing some of our least favorite games for “Review a Bad Game” day!

• Review a Bad Game: Resident Evil: Survivor by Chip Chasterson
• Review A Bad Game: Epic Mickey 2 by Cary
• Review a Bad Game: Alone in the Dark: Inferno by Hatm0nster
• Review a Bad Game: Porky Pig’s Haunted Holiday by The Duck of Indeed
• Review A Bad Game: Myst (Nintendo DS Version) by simpleek

Later in the year, Hatm0nster brought us lots of awesome game news from PAX Prime.

• Mist Of Stagnation: RTS, FPS, and Goggles 
• Bot Colony: A Glimpse of the Future? 
• Smashmuck Champions: PAX Interview
• Sword ‘n’ Board: Invention, Exploration, and Cardboard!

We took a stab at looking at making game recommendations with a brief series titled “Should You Get.”

• Should You Get: LIMBO by Hatm0nster
• Should You Get: Fibrillation by The Duck of Indeed
• Should You Get: Dinner Date by The Duck of Indeed
• Should You Get: Receiver by The Duck of Indeed
• Should You Get: 9.03m by The Duck of Indeed (from January 2014, which was the end of the series)

And, finally, 2013 also saw the birth of one of our longest running series,” Resonance,” focusing on game music.

• Resonance: The Pit of 100 Trials (Super Paper Mario) by Hatm0nster
• Resonance: Remember Me (Remember Me) by Hatm0nster
• Resonance: In the Darkness (Super Paper Mario) by The Duck of Indeed
• Resonance: Giant Monster in Wait (Okami) by The Duck of Indeed
• Resonance: Sinister Shadows (Kingdom Hearts II) by Hatm0nster

Now it’s your turn! What were some of you favorite games from 2013?

Lede image by Flickr user Nate Allen (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)