Lowlander2
Banned
1. Halo 4; Many games this year had one individual aspect that made them shine above all else. Few were generally grandiose from beginning to end. Simply, Halo 4 was the most well-rounded experience in 2012. Excellent pacing, great graphics for aging hardware, oodles of content in Spartan Ops, multiplayer and co-op and, like many other nominees, had a story with #feels, which is damn impressive for Halo.
2. Sleeping Dogs; Was gunning for the top for almost the entire year. Wei Shen is easily one of the best anti-heroes seen in gaming in a long time, and the gameplay achieves the same thing Saints Row 2 did years ago; creating the nearly-perfect marriage of every open-world concept. The city felt alive and real, the variety was splendid, the amount of options was staggering, the size was big enough to hold many features but small enough to make it relatable and memorable. Had the shooting been either toned down or spruced up, it would have taken the year.
3. The Walking Dead; I don't think there's anything I can say about this game that hasn't already been said. I'm one of the few to argue that the relative lack of different consequences actually highlights how shocking some of the moments can be, which only served to draw me into the story more. The QTEs also had a hidden edge of subversion to them, which was a far cry from the rigid Back To The Future episodes.
4. ZombiU; As I said in my review, it's not just one of the best survival horror games in ages. It's the most survival horror game in ages. It's testament to some of the hidden faculties that there's a strange irony in the system with two different screens bridging the gap between the game and the player that's long been growing in the survival horror genre. Not quite a system seller, but if you have a Wii U, no excuses.
5. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed; Again, the developers just got off their asses and made the most competent game of their genre by actually reinventing the parts of it that didn't work. The power-ups aren't overpowered, which makes thing more fluid and fun. Surprisingly great single player career, too. They got as much variety out of it as they ever could have.
6. Rock Band Blitz; The business decisions involved with the game have seen fit to benefit the developers as opposed to the player base, which have gone so far as to effectively break the game now, so I'm more than a little annoyed at some of the creatively bankrupt decisions they've made. But I did spend over one hundred hours playing over six hundred songs, and that has to count for something. Simple, fast, frantic and arcadey fun.
7. Spec Ops: The Line; Was absolutely not fond of the gameplay in any real measure. By third-person shooter standards, Spec Ops' mechanics are below average. But the story is indeed one of the greatest of its genre, if not the greatest. It doesn't just have a moral, but a message. A testament to the artistic capability of the medium.
8. Dishonored; The only real step forward it made for the choicey-stealth genre is making different routes not as blatantly signposted as they have been in the past, and Dishonored did little more than that. But it's an unsung flaw that the genre's almost always had, and that this game managed to sidestep it against all odds is alone worthy of praise. It made the choices a lot more organic, and the gameplay felt tailor-made to the player, at least moreso than others of its ilk.
9. Katawa Shoujo; Obviously wasn't much of a game, and even by visual novel standards, the choices were trite and contrived, but the story contained therein was worthy of anyone's time. The prior trepidation wasn't without due cause, but story was tasteful, heartfelt, involving and moving. Music wasn't bad, either.
10. Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault; Tower defence has always been a pretty limited genre in my experience, but this Ratchet & Clank got as much out of it as it possibly could have. It was very short, but it continued to show how Insomniac refuses to be complacent with its longstanding IP, a rare treat among games these days.
x. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2; The story mode, while having a great villain, shows how tired the set-up is by this point, as does the multiplayer. But at least we still have those zombies. Tranzit was a great way to shake the formula up.
x. The Darkness 2; It was way too short, the graphics were indeed too colourful, I don't remember the villain's name despite the fact that I remember his aesthetic design and even the gameplay started to get old by the finish line, but the way the game forces you to mix up Darkness powers and gunplay created a need for spatial awareness, which encapsulated a great mix between fun and challenge.
On the whole, not really a fan of this year, especially not compared to 2011 and 2010.
2. Sleeping Dogs; Was gunning for the top for almost the entire year. Wei Shen is easily one of the best anti-heroes seen in gaming in a long time, and the gameplay achieves the same thing Saints Row 2 did years ago; creating the nearly-perfect marriage of every open-world concept. The city felt alive and real, the variety was splendid, the amount of options was staggering, the size was big enough to hold many features but small enough to make it relatable and memorable. Had the shooting been either toned down or spruced up, it would have taken the year.
3. The Walking Dead; I don't think there's anything I can say about this game that hasn't already been said. I'm one of the few to argue that the relative lack of different consequences actually highlights how shocking some of the moments can be, which only served to draw me into the story more. The QTEs also had a hidden edge of subversion to them, which was a far cry from the rigid Back To The Future episodes.
4. ZombiU; As I said in my review, it's not just one of the best survival horror games in ages. It's the most survival horror game in ages. It's testament to some of the hidden faculties that there's a strange irony in the system with two different screens bridging the gap between the game and the player that's long been growing in the survival horror genre. Not quite a system seller, but if you have a Wii U, no excuses.
5. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed; Again, the developers just got off their asses and made the most competent game of their genre by actually reinventing the parts of it that didn't work. The power-ups aren't overpowered, which makes thing more fluid and fun. Surprisingly great single player career, too. They got as much variety out of it as they ever could have.
6. Rock Band Blitz; The business decisions involved with the game have seen fit to benefit the developers as opposed to the player base, which have gone so far as to effectively break the game now, so I'm more than a little annoyed at some of the creatively bankrupt decisions they've made. But I did spend over one hundred hours playing over six hundred songs, and that has to count for something. Simple, fast, frantic and arcadey fun.
7. Spec Ops: The Line; Was absolutely not fond of the gameplay in any real measure. By third-person shooter standards, Spec Ops' mechanics are below average. But the story is indeed one of the greatest of its genre, if not the greatest. It doesn't just have a moral, but a message. A testament to the artistic capability of the medium.
8. Dishonored; The only real step forward it made for the choicey-stealth genre is making different routes not as blatantly signposted as they have been in the past, and Dishonored did little more than that. But it's an unsung flaw that the genre's almost always had, and that this game managed to sidestep it against all odds is alone worthy of praise. It made the choices a lot more organic, and the gameplay felt tailor-made to the player, at least moreso than others of its ilk.
9. Katawa Shoujo; Obviously wasn't much of a game, and even by visual novel standards, the choices were trite and contrived, but the story contained therein was worthy of anyone's time. The prior trepidation wasn't without due cause, but story was tasteful, heartfelt, involving and moving. Music wasn't bad, either.
10. Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault; Tower defence has always been a pretty limited genre in my experience, but this Ratchet & Clank got as much out of it as it possibly could have. It was very short, but it continued to show how Insomniac refuses to be complacent with its longstanding IP, a rare treat among games these days.
x. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2; The story mode, while having a great villain, shows how tired the set-up is by this point, as does the multiplayer. But at least we still have those zombies. Tranzit was a great way to shake the formula up.
x. The Darkness 2; It was way too short, the graphics were indeed too colourful, I don't remember the villain's name despite the fact that I remember his aesthetic design and even the gameplay started to get old by the finish line, but the way the game forces you to mix up Darkness powers and gunplay created a need for spatial awareness, which encapsulated a great mix between fun and challenge.
On the whole, not really a fan of this year, especially not compared to 2011 and 2010.