Yay or Nay: Was this a bad/medicore year in gaming?

It kinda seems like people are acting like there are a ton of GOTY contenders... doesn't it really just boil down to The Walking Dead, Journey, and Far Cry 3? That's not going by only my opinion alone, since I didn't play Journey and while I think Far Cry 3 is fun, it's not hugely different from the past games and the story/ending aren't very good. Even those three games don't seem that great, it's more "least worst" than best. It's not like this is Red Dead vs.ME2 vs. Limbo vs. Bayonetta, and other good/great games... or last year's Saints Row 3, Portal 2, Skyrim, Witcher 2, Uncharted, Zelda, Batman, BF3, etc.

Personally, I think ME3 is still easily one of the best games of this year, if not the best, even with the the horrible ending the rest of the game was great and the multiplayer was surprisingly good, but I know most "official" lists are going to ignore it because of the ending. If someone does think this was a great year I'd love to know what games they played, since I played everything big and they all have major, almost game breaking, flaws.

Some of my bigger disappointments were:

Halo 4: It was fun and I liked humanizing chief, but it has some of the worst mission design I've ever seen since the game is literally "press the button" or drive a vehicle.

AC3: Connor was boring, but Haytham was great, which makes Connor seem even more lame. Also so many historical events was a bit cheesy. Horrible menu system, no fun side missions, and money was pointless.

Borderlands 2: Silent protagonists come off as lazy 90% of the time, still no real customization, soul, or heart... just dumb fun, which is fine.

Ghost Recon: Too mainstream, no squad mechanics makes it like any other shooter.

RE6: Enough said already.

It was less than great but better than mediocre, I would say.

Hooray!

nay. A year with Crusader Kings 2 and Hotline Miami and Binary Domain are not disappointments.

Nay. This year gave me:

• Tokyo Jungle
• Persona 4 Arena
• Persona 4 Golden
• Journey
• The Walking Dead
• Asura's Wrath
• Katawa Shoujo
• Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Those were all fantastic experiences.

This year was certainly different, but I would not call it bad by any means.

It was a good year, lots of sleeper hits but I think the games that everyone expected to be big all failed in some way and I don't think there was any one game that really stood out as the best game this year.

I'll take 2012's game crop over "Limbo vs. Bayonetta" any year.

I played a ton of really great games this year, from a remake of my favorite franchise (XCOM) to some amazing downloadable games (Dust, Mark of the Ninja, Journey), to some excellent entries in well-known series (Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, ME3, Diablo 3) to some new big IPs that may (or may not) have a future (Dishonored, Reckoning, Sleeping Dogs). It holds up as well as any year I can remember. The Walking Dead sucked, but you can't win 'em all I guess.

People love the shit out of Xcom. but yea I guess there aren't that many options.

It's the year where the smaller, lesser known titles were better than pretty much every AAA release.

@FluxWaveZ said:

Nay. This year gave me:

• Tokyo Jungle
• Persona 4 Arena
• Persona 4 Golden
• Journey
• The Walking Dead
• Asura's Wrath
• Katawa Shoujo
• Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Those were all fantastic experiences.

I like The Walking Dead (haven't finished it yet) and Asura's Wraith was interesting, but both of them are barely games. Also, I wasn't say there were no good games this year, but less than 8 great games i(going by your list and other people's in here so far) isn't that great.

@Deathstriker said:

but less than 8 great games i(going by your list and other people's in here so far) isn't that great.

That's good enough for me, especially when I've spent so much time with Persona 4 Arena alone.

Yeah pretty bad. I went back and played a bunch of old games though and they reminded me that gaming could be pretty cool.

Connor may actually be the least interesting character in the history of fiction.

Nah.

Sleeping Dogs and Crusader Kings II (11 hours of learning the game and I'm reconsidering my GOTY list) is enough to call it a good year. Hotline Miami, Dragon's Dogma, The Witcher 2 (EE and on 360), and others make it a great year.

'What I liked the most' is probably a better phrase than 'the best', but anyways I enjoyed the shit out of:

- Black Mesa

- Hotline Miami

- Dishonored

- Hitman: Absolution (contracts mode)

- Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

- Dear Esther

So nay

I dunno, it was certainly not a great year, but it was still good in my opinion. I think a lot of people are forgetting the many good games that came out before summer this year and a bunch of indie/download only games that were really great. Also a ton of really good surprises this year. There were certainly less BIG MEGA HUGE SUCCESSFUL WHOA OH MY CHRIST AAA FALL RELEASE GAMES this year, but that doesn't make it a mediocre year in my mind.

Mediocre.

For me a lot of the big sequels disappointed and almost none of the new stuff managed to offset that.

I'm gonna put it this way. 2007 is the year where my personal GOTY and runner up have always been current gen games. If i take my top 2 games of each years starting from 2007 i have: TF2, CoD 4, WotLK, GTA IV, Uncharted 2, Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Portal 2 and Saints Row 3.

This year my top 2 games are Journey and Max Payne 3.

If i rearrange all 12 of these games in order from least favorite to favorite, both Journey and Max Payne 3 would be near the bottom of the list. Without really putting too much thought into it i can only see 3 games that could potentially fall behind those 2.

There's also many other games from previous years that didn't take the top 2 spots of their respective years that would still be able to beat both Journey and MP3. Starcraft 2, Portal, HL2: EP2 and Bastion among others.

I don't know. It's harsh to say that a year that borught us Halo 4, Syndicate, Mass Effect 3, Walking Dead, Assassin's Creed 3, Journey, Dishonored and Borderlands 2 was bad. Personally, I kinda liked it.

It was a fairly mediocre year in that gaming didn't take any big strides this year.

This was the year when the casual motion control thing kind of petered out quietly.

Two of the big game series had conclusions that kind of turned out to be wet farts in Mass Effect 3 and Assassins Creed 3, both failing to build on what had already been built by previous entries.

There was decent stuff happening in the smaller game space, but that scene has still to find a significant mainstream breakthrough.

I shouldn't wonder if we've seen the beginning of the end of Nintendo as a major hardware publisher. I don't really see the Wii U turning things around in a major way.

A lot of the industry seems to be in limbo waiting for new consoles.

Sleeping Dogs, Hotline Miami, SSX and Trials Evolution are enough to mark this year as a good one for me.

Although I have yet to play Assassins Creed 3, so considering everyone's comments about it, I may still have some disappointment left to endure.

It was all right. You would be kind of disappointed if you only paid attention to AAA, heavily advertised games, but if you looked a bit deeper and picked up some other things, you'd find that it was a good year.

no, but i do think this year complaining about shit on the internet reached biblical levels. we complain so fucking much now that when we do have something to complain about its just lost in the white noise that complaining has become.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@Deathstriker said:

but less than 8 great games i(going by your list and other people's in here so far) isn't that great.

That's good enough for me, especially when I've spent so much time with Persona 4 Arena alone.

Well, I'm glad you had fun. For me, Portal 2, Saints Row 3, Skyrim, and BF3 alone beat 2012. I actually enjoyed TV more this year than games, but 2013 looks pretty good.

I think it was about as good as most years have been.

When we debate the best years in gaming at some future point (again), I doubt 2012 will be on anyone's list. "Mediocre" is a pretty good description.

I'd say a better definition would be "disappointing". Gamers had their hopes dashed more than a few times this year on several high profile franchises. Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil 6, Assassin's Creed 3, Ninja Gaiden 3, and Diablo 3 were all releases met with controversy. Other games which showed promise in previews before such as Spec Ops The Line, Lollipop Chainsaw and Kingdom's of Amalur Reckoning failed to completely deliver on their potential. There were good games, of course, but much of what excited us in 2011 didn't pan out in 2012.

@doobie said:

no, but i do think this year complaining about shit on the internet reached biblical levels. we complain so fucking much now that when we do have something to complain about its just lost in the white noise that complaining has become.

You do realize the irony, perhaps hypocrisy, that you're complaining right now... right? lol, seems like you just would've ignored the thread.

There were some stellar games this year, but no obvious tentpole standouts. Nothing as earth-shaking as Skyrim or Mass Effect 2 or Red Dead. I think that's partly because of console fatigue, but mine is an uneducated opinion at best.

On the flip side, this year saw a bunch of really playable efforts. I think the mean barometer of quality this year was a bit higher than in years past. So while we're not all clamoring over the same one or two experiences, we have at our hands a greater variety of games that are quite good.

So, nay. An unremarkable year, in some ways. But a wholly enjoyable library of titles came out in 2012.

@PenguinDust said:

When we debate the best years in gaming at some future point (again), I doubt 2012 will be on anyone's list. "Mediocre" is a pretty good description.

I'd say a better definition would be "disappointing". Gamers had their hopes dashed more than a few times this year on several high profile franchises. Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil 6, Assassin's Creed 3, Ninja Gaiden 3, and Diablo 3 were all releases met with controversy. Other games which showed promise in previews before such as Spec Ops The Line, Lollipop Chainsaw and Kingdom's of Amalur Reckoning failed to completely deliver on their potential. There were good games, of course, but much of what excited us in 2011 didn't pan out in 2012.

Dude... Ninja Gaiden 3 NEVER happened!!! lol, thanks for reminding of that abortion of a game. In general, I agree with you.

Not bad but no 2010 that is for sure. it was a year with a lot of smaller games where the indie ran the show. Many big games were disappointments and other promising ones were pushed back. This year lacked that one mind blowing game like the last several years have had. Some great ones for sure but no Dark Souls equivalent for me.

It wasn't bad or anything but last year was definitely better.

No, this would've been a fine transition year if Durango/PS4 launched in Q4. 2013 is going to be worse, with no real gems in sight, aside from BioShock Infinite and perhaps The Last of Us

This year was mainly just an indication of the somewhat awkward "lame duck" position that the current set of consoles are in.

We got a lot of great games this year, but the vast majority of the standouts were smaller indie experiences like Journey, Fez, Mark of the Ninja, and The Walking Dead. There were a lot of great big budget titles as well, but it did feel to me like there were fewer breakout blockbuster hits. Nothing on the level of something like Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, or Uncharted 2 in years past. I suspect that's because a lot of developers are largely just trying to bide their time while waiting for the next hardware offerings from MS and Sony to be revealed, and they're spreading out any top notch releases targeting the current consoles and filling in the gap by just tacking on yet another entry in their successful franchise (Gears of War: Judgment, God of War Ascension, etc).

@Deathstriker said:

@doobie said:

no, but i do think this year complaining about shit on the internet reached biblical levels. we complain so fucking much now that when we do have something to complain about its just lost in the white noise that complaining has become.

You do realize the irony, perhaps hypocrisy, that you're complaining right now... right? lol, seems like you just would've ignored the thread.

i said 'we'. i included myself in my complaint. i'm as much as part if the problem as you are.

No.

• Far Cry 3
• Dishonored
• Sleeping Dogs
• Natural Selection 2
• World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria
• Diablo III
• Faster than Light
• Torchlight II
• Halo 4
• Krater
• Awesomenauts
• Mass Effect 3

The list could go on, but I feel it will lose it's importance and be buried in this thread. I know that the question is pretty much subjective, but this year has had a lot of great releases for a variety of parties. That means a good year to me.

This year has been a big year for indies, and a mediocre one for everything else.

I think it wasn't bad... it was more of a year with very high "highs" and very low "lows". Many of the "AAA" games that were supposed to be extremely good turned out to be huge disappointments, at least for me, while many underdogs and games that would have flown under the radar in other circumstances proved to be the true winners this time. Case in point (IMO):

Lows:

• Mass Effect 3: Not as good as ME2 overall, plus the whole ending debacle.
• Assassin's Creed III: The series is running out of steam. Since Revelations it has been giving diminshing returns, though the game itself it's not "bad".
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning: For a game that basically doomed its developer, its ambition translated to the most abject failure. Everything about that game is bland and uninspired.
• Max Payne 3 and Hitman Absolution: Both are good games, but don't shine as their predecessors did before.
• Far Cry 3: The gameplay is a blast, but the story squanders a lot of its potential, especially when it comes to dealing with its main characters.

Highs:

• Hotline Miami: Simple, yet addictive and with exquisitely accomplished retro aesthetics.
• Borderlands 2: My second-most-played game on Steam, right after Skyrim. That has to be indicative of something, right? (Hint: that I liked it)
• Mark of the Ninja: Fucking nails the stealth genre.
• The Walking Dead: GOTY.
• Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward: Tied for GOTY with TWD, if you ask me. Just like 999 (a game I've been championing for years and only recently began to be recognized by the GB community), a thrilling and innovative game that is radically different from any other experience on 3/DS.

Yay on downloadable games like Journey and the Walking Dead; nay on retail games.

Mass Effect 3, The Walking Dead, and XCOM, among others. This year was just fine for gaming. It wasn't the best year (last year was pretty crazy, right? Portal 2, Skyrim, Saints Row, Deus Ex, and so on), but it was far from mediocre.

@doobie said:

@Deathstriker said:

@doobie said:

no, but i do think this year complaining about shit on the internet reached biblical levels. we complain so fucking much now that when we do have something to complain about its just lost in the white noise that complaining has become.

You do realize the irony, perhaps hypocrisy, that you're complaining right now... right? lol, seems like you just would've ignored the thread.

i said 'we'. i included myself in my complaint. i'm as much as part if the problem as you are.

Over-dramatic much? I simply asked what people thought of 2012 and gave my own opinion... it's not like we're in here killing kittens; it's not that big of a deal.

@FluxWaveZ said:

Nay. This year gave me:

• Asura's Wrath
• Katawa Shoujo

Those were all fantastic experiences.

Yea, same here.

It's not the best year, but it's far from being a bad year.

While a lot of the big titles ended up disappointing in some ways, I still had fun with most of them. It's not like most of them were bad games, they just weren't as great as we wanted them to be. Plus it had a lot of nice surprises such as Dishonored, Walking Dead, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3, Syndicate, Forza Horizon, Crusader Kings 2 (I'm sure there is more I'm just too lazy to look at my games list).

Plus we got a fantastic version of XCOM, which is an automatic + 1 to the year.

Anyways, next spring is going to be insane and who knows what the fall will bring. Considering the caliber of most console launch games next fall might be a lot more exciting then this year, but it might also end up being far worse in terms of quality.

In comparison to last year or 2010, this year wasn't mediocre, it straight up stank.

I'm a PC gamer on a fresh computer so this year was OK.
 
[Enter smug as fuck smiley right here]

I did not find this year very exciting. Diablo 3, XCOM, and Halo 4 were the only games I bought, and nothing else but Legend of Grimrock interested me.

I dunno, it seems kind of idiotic to call this a mediocre or bad year for games. We got a bunch of new games this year, and a lot of awesome new IPs.

If you take a look at all the games that came out this year, and only a few interest you, I really don't think the games are the problem.

Not at all, excelent year in my opinion. The big titles didn't hit as hard as normal but some real sucker punches: Far Cry 3, FTL, Dishonored, Walking Dead, Journey, Hotline Miami, P4 Arena, Tokyo Jungle. Also some decent tipple A titles such as Borderlands 2 and Halo 4. I would much prefer a year like this over what we had last year where it was nothing but the same franchises over and over and indie games that were all basically the same concept.

@jsnyder82 said:

I dunno, it seems kind of idiotic to call this a mediocre or bad year for games. We got a bunch of new games this year, and a lot of awesome new IPs.

If you take a look at all the games that came out this year, and only a few interest you, I really don't think the games are the problem.

By that logic no year can be bad or mediocre since a lot of games are going to come out no matter what. Looking at quality rather than quantity, 2010 & 2011 were easily better IMO. Most of the bigger games this year had huge design flaws.

For big budget games from the major publishers, absolutely. Thankfully, the indie scene continues to surprise. Hotline Miami, Thomas Was Alone Fez, FTL, Frog Fractions, Super Hexagon Spelunky, Journey (as you mentioned), and that's just the stuff I played and liked. Keep hearing great stuff about Mark of the Ninja, Dust and Miasmata, and even all those are just the tip of the iceberg. Great games happened this year, they just weren't from the normal channels.

@Deathstriker said:

@jsnyder82 said:

I dunno, it seems kind of idiotic to call this a mediocre or bad year for games. We got a bunch of new games this year, and a lot of awesome new IPs.

If you take a look at all the games that came out this year, and only a few interest you, I really don't think the games are the problem.

By that logic no year can be bad or mediocre since a lot of games are going to come out no matter what. Looking at quality rather than quantity, 2010 & 2011 were easily better IMO. Most of the bigger games this year had huge design flaws.

I disagree.

@FluxWaveZ said:

Nay. This year gave me:

• Tokyo Jungle
• Persona 4 Arena
• Persona 4 Golden
• Journey
• The Walking Dead
• Asura's Wrath
• Katawa Shoujo
• Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Those were all fantastic experiences.

Other than Journey, that list is 'bleh' to me, pretty much summing up my gaming year. Other than the few good vita games, nothing really excited me.