Is it GOTY time aready? Guess 2012 is just about over. Well, here's my list, which I've been adding to over the year rather than write it all now. It's easier to remember the early good games like that. Like Katawa Shoujo. Anyway, here are my top ten games of 2012! Caution! Incoming wall of text!
1. XCOM: Enemy Unknown ; ALIEN ACTIVITY! If you want to know how to take an old cult classic game and remake/reimagine it, you should look at XCOM:EU and take notes, because this game shows how to do it right. The game has you fight off an alien invasion as the leader of the secret paramilitary organization known as XCOM. You fight the aliens in a turnbased strategy part and a strategic view where you manage your base, manufacturing, research, and try to keep panic from reaching critical levels in the nations that pay your bills. What's interesting is that tactical and strategic decisions influence each other. It's possible to play flawlessly tactically and lose the game in strategy and vice versa. And yes, you can lose the game. Play 20 hours and the aliens win. Game over, try again. The game will not cuddle you, except on easy, and complete defeat is always an option. Most strategy fans should be able to beat Normal, but when the difficulty is Classic or Impossible, especially if you're playing the one-save-only Ironman mode, get ready to see the defeat screen. The game is somewhat buggy, though, and the final part of the campaign is kind of... eh. But overall, it's definitely my favorite game of 2012.
2. Katawa Shoujo ; A visual novel made through online collaboration about a young man with a bad heart going to a school for the disabled, and how he interacts with, befriends, and maybe even falls in love with the other students on the school. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it? But what could easily have been a really offensive idea turns into one of the sweetest and most smile-inducing games of 2012, or in case of the bad endings, a real tearjerker at times. The stories in the game are pretty different in tone and style, though, but it seems everyone who plays it has a different favorite, so it works out. Even if you never played a Visual Novel before, I'd recommend giving it a try. It's free, too. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting to start running for exercise after playing Emi's route. That's just a natural side effect of the game.
3. FTL: Faster Than Light ; Or "For The Loss", as it were. You play as a starship on a desperate mission in a hostile environment. Travel eight sectors and fight the boss, or die trying. Usually the latter. FTL is hard, really hard, but it's also fun in a frustrating way. You struggle to keep weapons, shields, engines, and so on powered, crew members alive from the hostile intruders, and for heaven's sake, someone put that fire out! And why is Life Support offline?! Success in this game is both earned and comes down to luck, as FTL has taken notes from some roguelike games in randomness and harsh consequences. There is no saving, except suspend saves. What happens happens and there's no going back. Because the rebels are right behind you. And waiting in ambush in front of you at the next jump. Good luck! You'll need it. It is worth mentioning that a recent patch added a colorblind friendly mode. Which easily earns it a few spots up on my GOTY list.
4. Kid Icarus Uprising ; Pit is back! Over two decades after the original Kid Icarus, Pit returns to battle the evil Medusa and save humanity. At least, it's how the story starts... How it ends and how it gets there is a different, yet very awesome, thing altogether. The game is split between a flying part, which plays much like Sin and Punishment, and a ground part where Pit runs, dodges, and shoots his way through the levels. The game is fast, and exactly as difficult as you want it to be, thanks to a very customizable difficulty selection, but if you want good loot, you need to take a few chances with the difficulty. I need to mention the writing, too, as this game is very well written, and pretty funny. The story has some amazing twists and turns, and all characters get some laugh out loud moments. The game has no respect for the fourth wall, what with Pit asking who this "Kid Icarus" is, and several references to game mechanics and other Nintendo games.
5. Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy ; Say THAT ten times fast. Obligatory title mocking aside, this is one of those game that works far better than it should. Final Fantasy has always had good music, so, really, a rhythm game based on Final Fantasy is not that odd an idea. It works pretty well, you control it via the touch screen where you tap, slide, or hold the stylus on the screen with the music to pass the various levels. However, the game also has RPG elements, where you pick a party of main characters from the Final Fantasy games, and various unlockables, and have them fight or run along to the song you're playing. Your characters then level up and learn new skills hat make it easier to survive in songs, like getting more HP, or make the characters more efficient at slaying monsters. There's a ton of songs in the game, and many more available as DLC. And yes, One-Winged Angel is in the game from the start, in case you wondered. Of course it is.
6. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams ; Another game on the list that shows how you do a reimagining of an old classic. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a 2D platformer with a twist. Literally. With the press of a button, Giana transforms between her Cute form and her Punk form, but what sets this apart is that the entire level transforms along with her, terrain, enemies, artstyle, and music switches from fairy tale to hell and back again. Which looks rather impressive and is used constantly in the game. The game gives you infinite lives, and then demands you use them. Late in the first world, for instance, there's even a part reminiscent of that dreaded Dam level from the NES Turtles game. The music needs to be mentioned on its own. Like the level, it changes smoothly between a Commodore 64 like chiptune and a metal version of the same song and it does it so well you could swear that the song was just half of each, but no, there are two songs with the same melody running at the same time. All in all, Giana Sisters is a very solid 2D platformer, and it's pretty nice to see Giana break away from being the Mario clone it was initially to something even better. Your move, plumber.
7. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance ; If you look up "needlessly complicated story", there's a picture of Sora there. And that's really part of the fun. Thankfully Kingdom Hearts 3D comes with a recap and an encylopedia that pops in whenever some reference is made to an earlier game. Which almost makes it worth it to have all the Kingdom Hearts story collected in one place. The gameplay is, well, Kingdom Hearts. With a weird Nintendogs like pet raising system added. The new Flowmotion system lets you use the environment in battle and lets Sora and Riku travel around with superpowered freerunning skills, but it does make some battles a matter of leaping from wall to wall spamming the various invincible Flowmotion moves. It does looks pretty cool, though. Beating up things with a giant key still hasn't gotten old. It is an advantage if you have some knowledge of the Kingdom Hearts story, though, because it does like to toss around names like you're supposed to know them. At least it has the decency to have an ingame glossary and recaps of previous games.
8. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ; The King of Alliteration Fist Tournament. It's Tekken. It's a LOT of Tekken. It's a celebration of all things Tekken. If you like Tekken, you'll like TTT2. If you're curious about Tekken, TTT2 is a good place to start. Just try not to be overwhelmed by the number of characters. And the free DLC characters that bring the roster up from a lot to "What, REALLY?" Also worth noting: The netcode is pretty impressive, so if you want to fight online, it's a good game for that, too. Basically, it's the Tekken Team at its best.
9. The Sims 3 Seasons ; It's weather for The Sims 3. If you play the game, you'll know why that's such a big deal. In the age of DLC, it's good to see EA still committed to sending out proper expansions, and Seasons is one of the good ones. Gameplay-wise, it doesn't add that much, but the rainy mood and procedural snowfall works really well. Plus, the aliens are back, and they have their probes ready. So, you know, watch the stars... And if you befriend them and get their UFO for a vehicle, well, it has a fully functional laser cannon, if you're in the mood for hunting the most dangerous game. Seasons also integrates fairly well with the other expansions, Supernatural in particular as your supernatural creatures become able to change the weather to something unique, like having a fairy make it rain flowers.
10. Mass Effect 3 ; Just to get it out of the way, yes, I didn't like the ending either. Which is why it's down here in the low part of my list. But everything leading up to the ending? Yeah. That was awesome. Seeing the choices I made in the past two games come back, some in major ways, some... not, and basically turn my Mass Effect 3 playthrough into, well, MY Mass Effect 3 playthrough was just so cool. And they got the combat system down to something pretty fun, no matter if you're the sneaky type or just wants to nova someone in the face. I was only ging to give ME3 an honorable mention, but then the Extended Cut came out, and well, fixed a lot of what I didn't like. The multiplayer is a decent enough horde mode, too, and credit where it's due, the DLC model for the multiplayer is actually pretty smart. All updates are free, but you buy random booster packs, be it with ingame or real money, to get the weapons, classes and items in them.
And my honorable mentions go to:
x. The Sims 3 Supernatural ; Honestly, the witches, werewolves, vampires and fairies can be a bit annoying to play, and fairies are just blatantly overpowered. But then you get situations where the fire department is staffed by a fairy, a human, and the ghost of a woman who burned to death and a local witch creating havoc with her new love spell... However it's not on the list proper as it does come with a few major annoyances, chiefly being the zombies that spawn every full moon. That's 4-7 days ingame. This did, however, create the most awesome, yet terrible, bug in a game this year: If you saved during a zombie apocalypse, it would never end, more or less corrupting your save with infinite zombies.
x. Angry Birds Star Wars ; Use the Red Bird, Luke! Oh, wait, Luke IS the Red Bird... In the category of crossovers that make you go "Wait, what?" but actually work, we have Star Wars as Angry Birds. And it is Angry Birds with Star Wars characters and powers. Like Red Luke being able to use his lightsaber to cut through obstacle, Yellow Han has his blaster, Brown Obi-Wan can use the Force and so on. It's incredibly silly, but it kind of works out. Angry Birds is a tried and true formula at this point, so it's more or less just more of that. With Star Wars. And Pig Vader.
x. Catherine ; While I wasn't that much into it, I'm giving Catherine an honorable mention because it is both a fairly well made game and it is rare to see a game handle midlife crisis and matrimony as themes up front and center like this. Would have been nice to have seen this released in 2011, but you know, Atlus gonna Atlus.
x. Street Fighter X Megaman ; It's a nice idea for a crossover, and fighting the Street Fighters is pretty fun. They fight more or less as they do in Street Fighter. The level design is a bit... eh, though.
x. Endless Space ; I played the alpha and beta of Endless Space and it had some promise, but since I haven't actually played the final version, even though I have it on Steam, I can only give it an x, and not a numbered spot on my list. It's a fairly solid space 4X, with an interesting approach to space battles.
Finally that game from 2011 that I can't believe I waited a year to play, and would surely have had a high spot on last years list. That game is of course:
2011. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ; I was never much of an Elder Scrolls fan, but i picked Skyrim up on sale. And, well... it did live up to its reputation. And then some. Gone was the annoying level system from Morrowind and it was replaced with a more sensible skill system and straightforward leveling system as well as a huge world with a lot of quests and dragons. Tons of them. Although you do not need many dragons for a ton. Anyway... Best game from 2011 that I missed? Skyrim. Definitely Skyrim. It's not even close.
And that's about it. Changes pending in case of awesome deals at the Steam Sale, but I don't think this will change much. No Sonic game on the list this time for me... Sonic 4 Episode 2 was kind of disappointing. But I am pretty sure nothing will topple XCOM from being my GOTY. Still can't quite believe Firaxis pulled that one off as well as they did...
EDIT: Got to play Kingdom Hearts 3D. Added that, demoted Angry Birds to honorable mention.