GOTY 2012
My list of games which made my 2012 gaming year memorable. I don't write often. I don't write about games often. Be gentle.
List items
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With the strong writing of The Walking Dead placing it as my 2nd favorite game of the year, XCOM stands at number 1 with its impeccable gameplay. While The Walking Dead had difficult decisions to be made in the story, every single choice made in and out of battle had weight in XCOM. Do I take a low probability shot with two soldiers or move one in to get more likely damage while placing the other soldier in Overwatch, hoping the alien will try to retreat? Do I begin searching armor to keep my soldiers alive longer or go for advanced weaponry to hit back at those aliens harder or do I save some cash to buy satellites to keep nations in my good graces while also providing more monthly inflow of cash or... The possibilities seem endless and while they could become overwhelming, XCOM makes a wrong decision feel oh-so-wrong and a right decision to feel neuron-firing-strategy-genius-right. So lets honor the fallen soldiers of XCOM by letting everyone know, XCOM is the greatest game of 2012.
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Awkward shooting segments aside, The Walking Dead tells a story which fits alongside the comic series while feeling more within the same universe and containing more interesting, empathetic characters than AMC's immensely popular TV series. Some player's may argue that the decisions you make along the way lack weight but I always felt that character's reacted realistically to my choices and the narrowing of the plot at certain points felt necessary but never arbitrary. The final episode provided a satisfying conclusion and every episode along the way contained standout highlights which kept me engaged and often surprised. This title makes it to my 2nd greatest game of the year by sheer writing alone as the gameplay worked as a fairly standard adventure game but navigating conversational choices and cut scenes was far more riveting than I thought possible.
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Tower defense as a genre may be passed it's prime but Defender's Quest shows that there is still plenty of fresh ideas which can be explored within the TD template. Beyond this there is a fairly intriguing story which keeps you wanting to complete missions and chase down every side mission to get backstory and dialogue of the various misfits who join your team along the way. Add a robust New Game+ option with more unlockables, tougher enemies, more side missions and unique journal entries by the games main character and you'll be playing this game for tens of hours, just like I did.
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Isaac is such a sad character but I still took untold pleasure in watching him die hundreds of times. This game created a compulsion loop in my mind which forced me to constantly start the game with the idea of playing once but instead hitting restart every time I unexpectedly died. There is so much to see and while luck does play a large factor I felt that the more I played the better I became and the more consistently I would delve deeper and deeper through Isaac's basement. Just when I thought I was done I purchased the Wrath of the Lamb DLC and the game felt fresh again.
My only hope is that the game could be released on 3DS in the future.
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What arguably should have been GB's GOTY 2011 is on my list this year. After hearing the hours long argument of this game versus Skyrim I picked this up as I was hoping to avoid the technical problems which plagued the PS3 version of Skyrim. This was a great decision and I never regretted it for a moment. I played through this game in January and I had a lot of free time as I couldn't start work as I had broken my shoulder over Christmas break and this game filled my days exceptionally thoroughly. The story line is silly, the gameplay is silly and the whole damn environment is silly.
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As a fan of science fiction, it feels as though this game was made by someone like me, for someone like me. The stories told while travelling between nodes, through sectors is thrilling. To support this, there is interesting ship customization which requires critical thinking in order to get from one battle to the next and one from one shop to another. Once you feel like a seasoned professional at the game and you realize that maybe you should switch from playing on "Easy" to "Normal", you'll be reattaching those training wheels in a heart beat. This game is hard. But just like most rogue-likes (2012's Word of the Year) dying is fun, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun dying for tens of hours.
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A lot has been said about Journey so I won't bother trying to speak too much about the story. I will mention that the art direction is strong and that the various levels each have a unique sense of place in the grand design of the game. It would also be easy to dismiss this game's multiplayer if you weren't a fan of anonymous co-op but playing through more than 50% of the game with a random person who I'll never communicate with again (unless we were to be anonymously matched again and talked using the games built in calls, which in itself wouldn't convey much information) is meaningful.
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In case it wasn't apparent by this point, many of my favorite games of 2012 weren't released in 2012. Shadows of the Damned in one such game. It was released in 2011 but I didn't have a chance to play it until this year. While the mechanics of the game aren't especially interesting or even unique, they do appeal to my love of such games as Resident Evil 4. The two games control similarly and this familiarity helped me to just play the game and enjoy the games story and setting. I found the story to be engaging which is no small feat given that I can generally play a mechanically involved game with little to no story but have a difficult time remembering plots of TV shows I watched a week ago. This was not the case for SotD. The game follows a love story and there are enough twists and turns that by the end when the credits rolled I was inclined to turn the game off, turn my brain on and actually think about the story. I could easily be seeing meaning where there is none but regardless that impact of this games story on me were real.
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This game has charm. I'd never heard of the game before seeing the release trailer but that alone was enough to push me to purchase it. I may not have finished the game, but playing it transported me to a simpler time... a time when cowboys were awesome and all you needed to have fun was a six-shooter and a sense of exploration. My only regret is that I still don't own the soundtrack and can't listen to any of the fine tunes in the game without loading it up to play for a bit, but that's not such a bad compromise.
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While this technically can be considered The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection, I completed ICO last year but didn't have a chance to touch Shadow of the Colossus until January 2012. There are times I cursed myself for only owning Nintendo consoles until this generation but experiencing this game as a part of this collection is arguably the best way to be first exposed to it. No technical issues plagued this version of the game, which I'm not sure could be said of the original. HD visuals and a competent frame rate cemented this as one of the best looking games I played all year. Playing this game, it was impossible to forget everything I'd heard about the game and I'll admit that I had spoiled the ending for myself years ago, before I thought I would get a chance to play it. However, story, presentation and mechanics worked in concert to deliver one of the most emotional, and beautiful gaming experiences.
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