2012's Top Games of Top 10 Game's!!!

I don't post a lot but I do realize Top # Lists are as common and unremarkable as fly's. That said, games are a medium I truly admire and devote thought to so IF you chose to read this, know it is done in love, consideration and maybe some bitterness.

Thanks!

1) Journey. Who can know if it will be a worthwhile game on a third or fourth playthrough but I can safely say it had me in a state that no piece of art or entertainment had before: I was honestly touched by the company of another. That was singularly amazing. Everything else was pretty damn amazing too.

2) X-Com: Enemy Unknown. The last strategy game I loved was 1998's Starcraft.

3) Mass Effect 3. While NOT talking about the ending, ME3 still had plenty wrong with it. The lighting was all 'hard core' and dark, the side quests made no damn sense, the characters and writing were not up to ME2's and everything felt figgity and kinda rushed. That said. It's still a great game with sharp, interesting combat and a more interesting universe than most games of the last decade. Disappointing? Oh my god yes. Still better than most of what I played this year? Yup.

4) Halo 4. So despite an uninteresting ending and it feeling really just like another fucking Halo game: it being a good Halo game really puts it above any other shooter out there. The amazing sci-fi aesthetic and always changeing combat puzzles give it the beating heart of a shooter that doesn't dry up when you finish it. The multiplayer is still the most interesting out there and the assault rifle finally sounds like a son-of-a-bitch again!

5) Far Cry 3. Again, disappointing. Not nearly as emotionally or environmentally involving as Far Cry 2 it was nevertheless fantastically satisfying to stealth your way around camps without eyes ever falling on you. That or just blowing shit up. Or just wandering around the jungle. It played great and it left a good portion of that up to you. That's why it's here. Unlike...

6) Walking Dead. Y'know, I didn't want to hop on the Walking Dead train but it is pretty good. It's story is engaging and... and... well, nothing else. The gameplay feels like filler and is often poorly thought out and frustrating. When you are asked to collect objects or solve a 'puzzle' the game becomes a huge chore which is why it's so far down. Sure it's engaging, but so is a good TV show. And it's that and it aint much else. Lee is boring, Clementine is boring and the redneck guy is ok. For my money, everyone interesting is dead by episode 4, so yea...

And we're done. That was my Top 10 for 2012. Because y'know, games this year were pretty fucking banal. Maybe good, but that doesn't mean I am going to care. Witcher 2, Mark of the Ninja, Borderlands 2, Dishonored and Sleeping Dogs were all games just uninteresting'ly clinging to their genre and suckling off proven knee-jerk impulses. I couldn't be bothered to finish any of them. If I don't care about the place I really don't give a crap about whether the next gun will be better than mine nor do I care if I killed that guy without him knowing I was there. WHY WAS I THERE? Ahhhh, who cares...

From everything I hear 'Fez' may need to be on my list but I played a lot of that game and put some notable thought into it and came out with nothing of the bigger puzzles. I guess I'm just too damn stupid for Fez. Really though, at the end of the day only two games grabbed me this year and they are at #1 and #2. The rest was good.

Thanks for reading. All one of you.

Seriously though, thanks,

please leave a comment. :)

I don't post a lot but I do realize Top # Lists are as common and unremarkable as fly's. That said, games are a medium I truly admire and devote thought to so IF you chose to read this, know it is done in love, consideration and maybe some bitterness.

Thanks!

1) Journey. Who can know if it will be a worthwhile game on a third or fourth playthrough but I can safely say it had me in a state that no piece of art or entertainment had before: I was honestly touched by the company of another. That was singularly amazing. Everything else was pretty damn amazing too.

2) X-Com: Enemy Unknown. The last strategy game I loved was 1998's Starcraft.

3) Mass Effect 3. While NOT talking about the ending, ME3 still had plenty wrong with it. The lighting was all 'hard core' and dark, the side quests made no damn sense, the characters and writing were not up to ME2's and everything felt figgity and kinda rushed. That said. It's still a great game with sharp, interesting combat and a more interesting universe than most games of the last decade. Disappointing? Oh my god yes. Still better than most of what I played this year? Yup.

4) Halo 4. So despite an uninteresting ending and it feeling really just like another fucking Halo game: it being a good Halo game really puts it above any other shooter out there. The amazing sci-fi aesthetic and always changeing combat puzzles give it the beating heart of a shooter that doesn't dry up when you finish it. The multiplayer is still the most interesting out there and the assault rifle finally sounds like a son-of-a-bitch again!

5) Far Cry 3. Again, disappointing. Not nearly as emotionally or environmentally involving as Far Cry 2 it was nevertheless fantastically satisfying to stealth your way around camps without eyes ever falling on you. That or just blowing shit up. Or just wandering around the jungle. It played great and it left a good portion of that up to you. That's why it's here. Unlike...

6) Walking Dead. Y'know, I didn't want to hop on the Walking Dead train but it is pretty good. It's story is engaging and... and... well, nothing else. The gameplay feels like filler and is often poorly thought out and frustrating. When you are asked to collect objects or solve a 'puzzle' the game becomes a huge chore which is why it's so far down. Sure it's engaging, but so is a good TV show. And it's that and it aint much else. Lee is boring, Clementine is boring and the redneck guy is ok. For my money, everyone interesting is dead by episode 4, so yea...

And we're done. That was my Top 10 for 2012. Because y'know, games this year were pretty fucking banal. Maybe good, but that doesn't mean I am going to care. Witcher 2, Mark of the Ninja, Borderlands 2, Dishonored and Sleeping Dogs were all games just uninteresting'ly clinging to their genre and suckling off proven knee-jerk impulses. I couldn't be bothered to finish any of them. If I don't care about the place I really don't give a crap about whether the next gun will be better than mine nor do I care if I killed that guy without him knowing I was there. WHY WAS I THERE? Ahhhh, who cares...

From everything I hear 'Fez' may need to be on my list but I played a lot of that game and put some notable thought into it and came out with nothing of the bigger puzzles. I guess I'm just too damn stupid for Fez. Really though, at the end of the day only two games grabbed me this year and they are at #1 and #2. The rest was good.

Thanks for reading. All one of you.

Seriously though, thanks,

please leave a comment. :)

As I can see, we at least have some favorites in common, so it is not yet all too meaningless... Didn't find ME3 disappointing, though.

Far Cry 2 was emotionally involving?

. Witcher 2, Mark of the Ninja, Borderlands 2, Dishonored and Sleeping Dogs were all games just uninteresting'ly clinging to their genre and suckling off proven knee-jerk impulses

I'm all for an expression of opinion, but you should probably elaborate on The Witcher 2 and Sleeping Dogs. I haven't played MotN, and I can definitely see issues with Dishonored and Borderlands 2, but how come Halo 4's lackluster campaign and Mass Effect 3's cheesy dialogue made it when those two didn't?

@OfficeGamer said:

Far Cry 2 was emotionally involving?

Well, for me yes. Not for any overall story but more for all the small details that let me feel I really was a bastard mercenary in a place where morals kinda didn't exist anymore. The weight of the character, the roughness of their hands/tattoos/voice if they hurt combined with the real cynisicm that defined the world got me invested in a place more than a story. I'm a sucker for atmosphere and for 'all the little things' in games, which Far Cry 2 had in spades. Number 3 just felt... kinda same'y by comparison and not nearly as challanging to the player in a variety of ways.

Also: for a great example of an 'all the little things' kinda game, play The Darkness from 07. Great game.

@VintAge68:Thank you for being more polite on my blog than I was on yours.@believer258 said:

. Witcher 2, Mark of the Ninja, Borderlands 2, Dishonored and Sleeping Dogs were all games just uninteresting'ly clinging to their genre and suckling off proven knee-jerk impulses

I'm all for an expression of opinion, but you should probably elaborate on The Witcher 2 and Sleeping Dogs. I haven't played MotN, and I can definitely see issues with Dishonored and Borderlands 2, but how come Halo 4's lackluster campaign and Mass Effect 3's cheesy dialogue made it when those two didn't?

Mass Effect has always been rooted in a kinda retro, 1970's sci-fi aesthetic that I've always appreciated. It's been somewhat lost by the 3rd one with all the 'badass'ifying' they tried to rope in to it but being kinda cheesy has been a boon to the series if you ask me. That said, cheesy'ness doesn't mean you can't have terrific writing. And at the end of the day, ME3 still had some of the best writing of any game this year and is very engaging. You could turn my argument back on it and maybe justifiably so and I even agree to an extent, hense my disappointment. But there really isn't any other game like them.

The Witcher was weird for me. I hadn't played the first one and was really looking forward to it. It's great too! Good writing, decent combat and a well thought out world left me impressed, but really, really bored for the 15 or so hours I played it. Do I know why? Not %100 no. But I really think at the end of the day it didn't do anything new. I'd seen dark fantasy before, I'd seen this combat before and I'm just not interested in it unless someone does something very different with the standard fantasy universe. Very well done game, it just never made me care which for me is everything, ie. Journey.

And Halo, well I just love Halo. I really like science fiction and I think it's got the most interesting moment to moment combat in shooters today. You make a good point and I will never fault anyone for saying it's not worth a list like this. But it's subjective at the end of the day and I did have a great time. I also really liked the campaign until the end when it kind of went sideways and fell into a ditch. *sigh*

Hope you better get where I'm coming from. :) It's all pretty personal at the end of the day.

Add some pictures duder, it makes it easier to read. Only game I played from that list is Walking Dead. You seem overly negative with your descriptions. Do you really hate everything or do you just have trouble saying nice things?

@darthorange: I was peeved when I wrote that. Sorry.

Its all good duder. Welcome back to the forums!