It’s the start of April. The reflection period is complete and I’ve caught up on nearly all of the games I wanted to play in the last year (Sorry, Analogue. I’ll get around to you eventually). With time to think about what I’ve played, I can finally compile of a list of games that I find to offer the best and most memorable experiences of 2012.

If you have read my lists in the past, you’ll know I always make a point to differentiate between “best” and “favourite”. You can have immense respect for a game that is not your cup of tea and you can have (probably irrational) love for a game with utterly terrible design. Much like my earlier anticipated lists, I’m going for a personal perspective with this. So, unfortunately, the eloquent Super Hexagon won’t be on this list, even if I think the game could easily win Best Game of 2012.

But I’d still give it a solid Honourable Mention. That game is brilliant.

Anyway, I shall begin, once again, with the list creation and delivering process.

Also, check out my friend PerfidiousSinn's list as well. He put a lot of time and effort into his list.

#10 - Dust: An Elysian Tail - Humble Hearts - XBLA/PC

• Best Metroidvania Game
• The "Cave Story” Award For Most Impressive Achievement
• Game That Was Most Likely To Kill Its Creator

Dust: An Elysian Tail is not a perfect game. There are too many extra gameplay and progression mechanics that lack coherent balance or satisfying depth. The mapping system is ambiguous and obtuse as compared to even the forefathers of the Metroidvania formula. Progression gates are purely artificial and strictly to adhere to the formula of Dust’s inspirations. The combat system, while inherently satisfying and well designed, lacks the evolution to prevent the late game becoming labourious. The story, while having a weighty theme and just enough maturity to pull it off, is rushed and not fully explored. Suffice it to say, the problems I have with Dust are numerous.

Yet, while Dust’s many blemishes can be blamed upon its over-ambition, that enthusiasm was what saved it. Dust is a massive title for its relatively slim play time, humble origins, and budget price and it does wonders in showing just how multifaceted games have become. The end product is tarnished by a handful of missed game design opportunities, but has overcome thousands more to create a fluid, responsive, beautiful, and incredibly enjoyable action platformer.

Its flaws are many, but Dust’s aspirations and successes still manage to push the caliber expected of downloadable and independent gaming up a few notches.

#9 - Mark of the Ninja - Klei Entertainment - XBLA/PC

• Best Case For Stealth Games Still Being A Thing
• The “Gunstar Heroes” Award For Best Upgrades
• The “Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars” Award For Best Game With The Worst Story

Stealth is one of the most out of date mechanics in game design. It’s an idealistic dream of designers to evoke that superspy or master assassin power fantasy, but it’s a core mechanic that continuously produces clumsy and unenjoyable results. It’s an outdated goal that is never achieved. Either compromises are implemented to destroy the designer’s dream and make a better game or stubbornness produces inaccessible, slow, boring, and needlessly punishing garbage. Either way, stealth is an annoying distraction, a gimmick that is a burden upon the rest of the game.

That is, until Mark of the Ninja came around and I witnessed the first game, in my eyes, to actually get it right.

The results are breathtaking and exhilarating. It’s a game that lays down its many, equally viable tools before you like paintbrushes of death and asks you to paint a creative and expressive masterpiece with each enemy encounter. It expects you to form your own role, your version of that ninja power fantasy, your own form of creative expression, and to execute it well. By allowing the player to define what it is they are painting, it will drive them to make every brushstroke absolutely perfect.

Oddly, several of the oldest mechanics in the medium (especially pausing, the 2D perspective, and point based reward feedback) were the keys to making this game succeed. Sprinkle in perfectly placed checkpoints and hidden collectibles, add a ton of challenge, and you have one of the most rewarding games of 2012.

It’s just a shame that the plot was paper thin and the ending was just another addition to the “contrived moral decisions don’t work” list.

#8 - Tokyo Jungle - Crispy's / SCE Japan Studio / Playstation C.A.M.P. - PSN/PS3

• Best Arcade Game
• The “R-Type Final” Award For Ridiculous Replayability
• The “Viva Pinata” Award For Best Use Of Animal Sex

I’m unconvinced Tokyo Jungle wasn’t developed in an alternate universe where the arcade is still king. It’s the kind of game you’d imagine to run across in that stereotypical, smoke filled Japanese arcade that kids once fantasized about. The cabinet would be littered with Japanese text, bright colours, and pictures of Pomeranians. Drunken, depressed businessmen would chain smoke cigarettes as they sit down in front of it. It’s the kind of game that, once your Beagle avatar has been thoroughly eviscerated by a looming Hyena, will stick with you long after your urban Japanese vacation had ended and not just due to the startling image of the above scenario.

Then you have the return home, that stop at the arcade being one of the highlights of the trip. A vivid memory and a single photo is all you have to communicate Tokyo Jungle’s simple, yet insane, premise to those who care. An image forms in their minds of the basic idea, but once you get into the mechanics of the game, your explanation becomes the ramblings of a mad man. Side-scrolling beat-em-ups and roguelikes. RPG levelling and equipment mixed in with leaderboards. Acid rain, giant rabbits, and dogs wearing hip hop clothing. A completely different version of the game is envisioned with each person you tell, impossible to truly nail down an accurate and thorough description of your unique and bizarre experience.

I guess all you could do is hope that they’ll play it for themselves one day and it will live up to their insane expectations.

#7 - Awesomenauts - Ronimo Games - XBLA/PSN/PC

• The “Castle Crashers” Award For Best Couch-Coop
• Best Theme Song
• The “Monday Night Combat” Award For Least Annoying DOTA Game

MOBAs/DOTAs have never cut ties with their RTS roots and it has severely hampered my enjoyment of the genre. The mechanics have grown and evolved into a competitive RPG of sorts, but the feeling and the approach of an RTS is still there. Movement is still clunky and imprecise, the game is full of unnecessary complexities, and there is a ridiculous amount of knowledge you must absorb about the game before playing.

One big difference that allows RTS’s to still be enjoyable is they craft an eloquent and enjoyable 10-50 hour tutorial called a “campaign” to teach you the ins and outs of each faction while simultaneously giving you some story or whatever. DOTA (or other, barely different games) give you dozens upon dozens of characters (see: factions) with minute differences that you should learn the ins and outs of immediately before you play or you’ll be feeding the other team and your a fucking asshole piece of cock shit.

Or whatever the kids use for insults these days.

And this is where Awesomenauts comes in. This game is a gigantic middle finger to MOBA/DOTA’s established conventions, as it provides the same basic experience without all the bullshit. The game removes the base level confusion immediately, destroying much of the barrier to entry through a more limited roster, more straightforward progression/upgrade mechanic, and more focused objectives: Kill bots and towers to progress, Kill enemy players to get money, kill creeps for health, and don’t die. That’s it.

It may just seem simplified down, but the other major revelation in Awesomenaut’s design is what makes it a winner: It draws upon the conventions of an action platformer instead of an RTS. I know that’s just swapping one genre’s complexities for another, but if there is a genre I and many others have burned into our skulls, it’s the platformer. Jump arcs and character weight. Mid air directional changes and double jumps. Hovering and jumping through platforms. None of this needs any explanation to the player, as it’s all second nature to anyone who has played a classic Mario, Mega Man, or Metroid game. Best of all, is that those skills are transferable. If you want to just jump and shoot your way to victory, that is totally valid for half of the cast.

In the end Awesomenauts is just an immensely fun and approachable game in a genre where that is truly a rarity.

#6 - Skulligirls - Lab Zero Games - XBLA/PSN/PC

• Outstanding Achievement In Animation
• Most Intelligently Designed Game
• The “BloodRayne: Betrayal” Award For Best Game That Was Largely Ignored

If you listened to the gaming press, Skullgirls is nothing more than a promising indie title that couldn’t hope to compare to the other, larger budget games in its competitive genre. Yes, Skullgirls features a beautiful Michiru Yamane soundtrack, unparalleled animation, and one of the best tutorials in the genre, but much of the dialogue around the game’s release (beyond sexualization, albeit parody driven, of a few characters, which is another debate entirely) was dominated by how atrociously difficult the AI was, how stereotypical and dull the story mode was (featuring little voice acting and almost no animation), how lacking a move list destroyed the game’s integrity, and how the slight cast of eight wasn’t worth your time investment. Most reviews were comfortable with picking Skullgirls apart and criticizing each little bit, drawing a conclusion about the game as a whole, and slapping a score on it.

Notice how I haven’t mentioned the versus gameplay yet, which is basically the point of a fighting game. Unfortunately, most reviews didn’t seem to focus on it either.

Quick aside: I can say, with certainty, that Street Fighter II is one of the best games of all time. By that, I don’t mean for its day, I mean as compared to fifty years of video game history. It’s that good.

Yet, I can understand if you don’t agree, especially if you’re basing this off of The World Warrior. Small roster, unclear moves, terrible story, and input reading AI, if you break the game down and remove the fact that it was breaking new ground, it was pretty much a terrible experience. The game may have been drastically improved over three years of iteration, but it’s just not as feature filled as one would expect from a modern game.

The fact that Street Fighter II is still played by many people today purely for its versus mode is, clearly, irrelevant.

I can also say, with its brilliant design and innovative gameplay mechanics, Skullgirls is a better game than The World Warrior and, with several years of enhancement, it may just become better than Super Turbo too.

#5 - Persona 4 Arena - Arc System Works / Atlus - PS3/360

• Best Competitive Multiplayer
• The “Super Smash Bros” Award For Best Fanservice
• The “Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts” Award For Weirdest Genre Change

Look, I just wrote a full post about how great Skullgirls (a fast-paced, charming, and eloquent fighting game) is and I can do that again about Persona 4 Arena (a fast-paced, charming, and eloquent fighting game) if you want me to. But the two games pretty much hits all of the same notes and both do their part to push the genre every so slightly into approachable territory. Sure, it might need some major balancing, but the game is still a blast to play regardless, even with some atrociously bad matchups.

The only real reason P4A is higher on this list than Skullgirls is because it’s Persona 4 sequel. I can’t help it. Persona 4 is the game I have simply enjoyed the most during my time here on Earth. Any sort of media that will expand upon that universe and attempt to recapture that feeling of playing the original will immediately grab my attention. Even with the absurd genre shift from a high school simulator JRPG dungeon crawler to an anime fighting game with a significant visual novel story, I still can’t help but fall in love with Persona 4.

#4 - Journey - thatgamecompany - PSN/PS3

• Outstanding Achievement In Artistic Design
• The “Super Metroid” Award For Excellence In Minimalistic Design
• Best Wandering Around And Looking At Things Simulator

Almost two decades ago, a little accident called Super Metroid was released. I only call it that because Yoshio Sakamoto, Gunpei Yokoi, and the rest of the miniscule development team at Nintendo R&D1 somehow crafted a brilliant experience that has yet to be matched. The game’s commitment to minimalistic design was far ahead of its time, yet it managed to perfectly execute it in a fairly complex action platformer. Necessary tutorial and exposition were both completely woven into the exploration, such that every new enemy encountered, secret discovered, and door opened equally increased your knowledge of the world around you and your confidence in controlling Samus. Simply put, this level of world building and melding of gameplay and narrative is rarely seen in games, largely due to the insane attention to detail necessary to create such a natural experience.

So, if you can follow the format of my previous points, you know that a comparison is going to be made between Super Metroid and Journey. A strange couple, but in a lot of ways they have a very similar approach to delivering narrative and world building, but they unfortunately have completely different goals.

Your abilities in Journey are severely limited to make each interaction meaningful and it works surprisingly well. If I chirp at this wall painting, it will react and reveal a glimpse into the past. If I run up to this seaweed like structure, my scarf increases back to full, which tells me more about the odd plant like structure than any amount of exposition could. By limiting my communication, a player avatar falling over and crumbling into dust implies a darker side in this tale instead of merely focusing on the player disconnecting to go play another game. This is how the story is told in Journey and it makes for a refreshing three hour ride of gameplay-as-narrative experiences.

Yet, Journey’s simple and more accessible route offers little in the way of actual “gameplay.” After looking back on your time with the game, you feel like those limitations that offer you those rich insights into the world actually hamper and lessen your experience, making it feel more like a touching narrative wrapped around an early gameplay demo. It might just be me nitpicking, but I feel like Journey is the stepping stone to a much larger and breathtaking game.

That experience was what I wanted out of Journey. Even if I loved my time with the game, I wanted a game that featured the same perfect weave of narrative and exploration, of discovery and exposition, but with a more fulfilling gameplay experience. Even with all that Journey accomplished, I guess I just couldn’t help but be disappointed in the end result.

And I guess I just wanted a new Super Metroid.

#3 - X-COM: Enemy Unknown - Firaxis Games - PS3/360/PC/iOS

• Best Series Revival That Thankfully Was Not A Shooter
• The “Fire Emblem” Award For Most Challenging/Rewarding Title
• The “Fire Emblem” Award For Best Moments of RNG Bullshit

It’s a weird thing to pin all of the success of Enemy Unknown on one mechanic, but it simply would not be as successful without permadeath. In an experience built around multilayered stress and situations being straight up fucked, permadeath is what holds the whole thing together.

Your entire run through the game can hinge on who you bring to battle and who makes it out alive, so each investment decision outside of battle is absolutely critical. Spend all your money on weapons and armor and you’ll soon have countries, which act both as income and lives (in a way), dropping like flies and a crippled base, preventing you from upgrading equipment further or progressing through the plot. Keeping countries safe and your base in peak condition is a full time investment though, so pool too much resources into them and your soldiers are going to die. Every element of the entire game wraps back to one simple fact: winning missions is what matters and you need every advantage you can get to keep your your soldiers alive.

Thankfully, the actual game part of X-Com is pretty damn good. There’s not much to say about it, really. There are some dumb scripting, bad bugs, and line of sight issues, but they are mostly a fleeting frustration unless you’re examining the game under a microscope. All in all, the tools given to you during the gameplay and your upgrade paths for your characters are excellently balanced and each encounter is a tough and challenging experience right up until the end game.

X-COM is one of the few games to capture that raw stress created by permadeath and channel it correctly. Its inclusion makes every decision, movement, and upgrade a calculated risk and reward decision that requires you to consider your strategy for not just the next few battles, but for the rest of your playthrough. Not since Fire Emblem 7 have I played a game that pulls it off so well.

#2 - Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - Chunsoft - 3DS/Vita

• Best [Insert Every Award For Storytelling and Localization]
• The “Metal Gear Solid 2” Award For Most Improved (Yet Paradoxically Still Worse) Sequel
• Winner of the “No, Not That Type of Visual Novel” Award

Wow.

Just wow.

Play 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors and then play Virtue’s Last Reward. This is less of a recommendation and more of a requirement. I don’t really give a fuck what your opinions are on the Visual Novel genre. Just get over your insecurity about a genre you barely understand (like I did) and enjoy two of the best looks into the thriller genre of storytelling that this medium has ever seen. Because both of these games have this whole storytelling business down.

You want to know how much I love these games? I was disappointed by Virtue’s Last Reward. Disappointed! It’s not nearly as good as 999 in my eyes, yet here I am just barely stopping myself from naming it the best damn game of 2012. It’s that fucking good.

I don’t really have much to say about that game beyond my slight grumblings about the puzzle structure and how I wish they were as good as 999’s puzzles. Other than that it’s just straight up insane rantings of an overly excited fan. So just play the games.

They’ll blow your mind.

P.S. While writing this post, I figured out what the hell "Virtue’s Last Reward" actually means and I’m kinda freaking out a bit.

#1 - Kid Icarus: Uprising - Sora - 3DS

• Game of the Year 2012
• The “Masahiro Sakurai” Award For Insane Breadth Of Content
• Best Series Revival That Thankfully Was A Shooter

Kid Icarus: Uprising is one of the best Saturday morning cartoons I’ve seen in years wrapped up in video game form.

It’s got a healthy 25 chapter first season of 15-20 minute missions. It follows your typical monster of the week cartoon structure, fighting excellent bosses at the end of each chapter/episode. It’s got mid season twists, tangential story arcs, and multi-part episodes that end on a cliffhanger. It’s even got your stereotypical “way too serious for a kid’s show” episode!

What’s best about the unique handling of the pacing and story structure is that it allows the story to just be fun without sinking too much into long exposition or melodrama. The characters are memorable, well written, and gracefully localized, which is especially impressive due to the game’s overall goofy tone. It’s not a hilarious game by any means, but the dialogue between characters has a nice comedic timing rarely seen in gaming and will keep a nice smile on your face throughout each level. Kid Icarus even manages to give you all the plot, laughs, and charming characterization while minimizing the amount of cutscenes to a fraction of most titles.

After watching the season finale and going back to see a few reruns, I can’t describe the experience as anything but delightful.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is the best game that Sakurai has ever created.

There is an attractive style in which the man creates his games, as they usually end with an impossible attention to detail and more content than necessary or even healthy. Yet, Uprising is the first game to take advantage of all of the crazy nonsense Sakurai loves to put in his games. Yes, there are a ton of trophies in Kid Icarus, but every other mechanic feeds back into the core gameplay somehow, whether it be street passing, the over 250 achievements in the game, the sheer variety in its gameplay inspirations (see below), the secrets and hidden paths scattered throughout every level, and, weirdly enough, a very enjoyable online multiplayer deathmatch mode. Even if it just means gathering more weapons and items, Uprising manages to channel all these weird aspects Sakurai likes to sprinkle his games with to contribute to the game in a (somewhat) meaningful way,

Kid Icarus: Uprising is a weird, yet delicious mix of Sin & Punishment, The World Ends With You, Gears of War, Diablo, and Persona 3.

TWEWY’s difficulty system was always a highlight for me, as dropping Neku’s level to improve the drop rate was a really clever idea. Uprising evolves the concept to become straight up genius. Not only are you using the 90 point difficulty scale to dictate how much money you make and what loot drops, but damage values, enemy population, enemy type, attack patterns, costs for an extra life, and even your path through the level are all altered by where you put that slider. It’s absolutely insane, but it somehow works and allows you to fine tune the difficulty to be perfectly in line with your skill level.

The flying mode, occupying the first half of each chapter, is just straight up Sin & Punishment: Star Successor. And that is AWESOME. Flying across the screen during these on rail sequences is natural to control, fast paced, and full of enemies, making for a completely chaotic experience that will leave you sweating bullets every time you transition to…

…The completely strange third person, over the shoulder shooter sections that make up the second half of each mission. Due to the touch screen this may sound clunky, but just as detailed options are available for tuning your controls as there are for the difficulty. After a few minutes of tinkering and a little practice to make sure, you’ll be mowing down enemies with your arsenal of weapons, vehicles, and ridiculous special abilities without problem.

Speaking of the weapons: have I explained yet that, besides having nine different weapon types that have a completely different playstyle, each weapon you find in the world has random stats associated with them? Because loot games are always fun, right? Usually that’s a grown worthy comment, but when you have an intricate fusing mechanic (ala Persona 3) for your weapons, it makes creating, customizing, and charging into battle with your ultimate weapon immensely satisfying.

It may toss a ton of mechanics into the mix, as expected from Sakurai, but, again, it somehow works. Kid Icarus is a better game for every single one of those mechanics and the combination of them all makes for an entirely unique experience.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is the best fucking game that came out in 2012 and ya’ll are gonna have to deal with it.

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This blog is a crosspost of a series of posts on my personal blog: Yeti Sized Games. It's a blog about my thoughts on gaming, whether it be reviews, opinions, podcasts, game design, and, sometimes, my time with indie game development while working towards getting my degree. Check it out if you want.

Thanks for reading the conclusion to my Top 25 Most Anticipated Games of 2013. It took much longer than I wanted it to take, but I hope that you at least enjoyed reading my blogs or learned about a new title or two coming out very soon. Thanks!

<< Part 2 (10 - 6) ----

#5 - Shin Megami Tensei IV

For the past decade, western gamers have turned to the Shin Megami Tensei series (and its offshoots) for a consistent source of quality titles year after year. From fantastic JRPGs releases like the crushingly difficult Digital Devil Saga to experimentation with RPG sub genres like Devil Survivor and Devil Summoner to the much beloved and critically acclaimed Persona series, the Shin Megami Tensei name is on the box of some of the best games to come out of Japan.

This is all largely due to the influence of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the third game in the main series. Not only was it one of the earliest SMT games to come out in North America, it established and refined much of the tone, style, and, most importantly, gameplay mechanics that persist throughout the SMT series. The biggest change? Transferring the series away from the traditional first person dungeon crawler into the standard third person JRPG. Honestly, I think the series is much better for it, as it is now focused on the mechanics that matter, letting one-offs like Strange Journey return to and explore the roots occasionally.

Now, I don’t expect Shin Megami Tensei IV to have a huge revolutionary impact on everything MegaTen for the next decade, but anything that is attempting to be Nocturne’s successor is no doubt going to be important for the series going forward. If you have any interest in the eventual new Persona, new Devil Summoner, or new SMT subseries that comes out 3-5 years from now, play this game. It’ll give you a glimpse at the changes, and quality, to come.

#4 - Ace Attorney 5

While we’re still waiting for that magical Professor Layton crossover to come over here, we at least have early confirmation that the long awaited fifth game in the Ace Attorney series will make it to international shores. Which is great, since the last game in the series, the often hated for no reason Apollo Justice, was released just shy of 5 years ago. Yeah, there has been an okay live action adaptation, a manga series that never interested me (because manga), and those boring Miles Edgeworth spinoffs stuffed full of fanservice and little else, but there hasn’t really been a true return to the roots of these somehow amazing courtroom adventure/visual novels in quite some time.

Enter Ace Attorney 5, Phoenix Wright’s return to the spotlight after a brief stint of piano playing and tuque wearing in Apollo Justice. He has a lovely new sidekick, ready to be embarrassed by Wright’s stints of incompetency in all of his cases. The visuals have been moved to 3D, but perfectly convert the expression and animation of the original trilogy. Heck, there’s even a new magical special ability to suss out the truth for witnesses and suspects.

But are any of those really what makes Ace Attorney work? Nah. The mechanics and visuals have always been second to the gripping storylines full of colourful characters, mysteries to unravel, and some truly amazing plot twists. Do they have the best or most mature writing and storytelling in the medium? Hardly. Yet, the series has never failed to produce fun and suspenseful tales that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Or bed. Or bus seat. Or wherever you play 3DS games.

Anyway, these are all elements of the Ace Attorney series that we can’t really identify the quality of until it sits in our hands. So regardless of the new screenshots, trailers, import previews, and convention demos, I’ll remain stoked to just finally be able to play this on my own terms.

#3 - Animal Crossing: New Leaf

I like to think that Animal Crossing in the same boat as Katamari Damacy, Pokemon, or Harvest Moon: each series has a magical and approachable game design that has gone through very few changes and only minor improvements across multiple titles. Yet, no matter which game hooks you into those series, you’ll find a wonderful, memorable title unlike anything else out there. Try to play any more of the series though, and you’ll find that you’ve quickly had your fill. Animal Crossing especially, as it just doesn’t have the room to expand on its original concept nor the depth in its gameplay to keep you coming back with each new game.

Yet, there is a solid reason why New Leaf is so high on my list and a reason that, despite what I said above, I am willing to jump into another title: Time. Simply put, it’s been a decade since I really got hooked on Animal Crossing for the Gamecube. And I mean hooked. I enjoyed the hell out of Animal Crossing back in the day. Jumping on at any and all hours of the day to see all of the cool events, helping out my best buds around town, checking Tom Nook’s stock before school every morning, and making sure that I hopped on every Saturday night to grab a new K.K. Slider song.

But my excitement for New Leaf is not exactly based on me trusting that the series has evolved and overhauled enough in the past 10 years to warrant revisiting. From what I’ve heard of the game, it’s still the same core experience. Instead, I feel that I have had a long enough vacation away that I can appreciate it again.

I mentioned Pokemon in that list above for a reason, as it is a series that I have similar feelings towards, but have managed to find a renewed interest in it regardless. I was part of that generation of kids who got struck hard by the Pokemon craze, but I personally stopped before the second generation even ended. I just had no drive to play those games anymore. Yet a decade later, I jumped back into Pokemon when White launched and was rewarded with hundreds of new Pokemon to catch, dozens of interface improvements, faster gameplay, and a boatload of new features added to a series I last played on a good ol’ brick Gameboy.

But more important than the details, Pokemon White got me to enjoy the core of the Pokemon experience again and ended up being one of the most enjoyable times I had with games that year.

And that is what I’m hoping New Leaf can achieve: restoring a long lost passion for a series I once loved. Maybe that’s putting too high of expectations on New Leaf, but I eagerly await my life to be taken over by talking animals and interior decorating if it succeeds.

#2 - Disgaea Dimension 2

Moving from Animal Crossing to Disgaea is a harsh jump, as they are opposites in almost every conceivable way. Disgaea is not approachable, incredibly complex, can be punishingly difficult, and has more gameplay systems than it is possible to keep track of in your head at one time. It is a series that has somehow survived on an incredibly small audience, as you won’t really get much out of it unless you are really, really into Strategy RPGs. It is the pinnacle of complexity in the genre, with very few SRPGs managing to top its breadth, depth, and insanity.

But to make an odd comparison between Disgaea and Animal Crossing, both series do suffer from the same stagnation. Each game comes with only mild improvements, the series having changed very little over the past decade beyond UI changes, some streamlining here and there, graphical upgrades, and some new gameplay mechanics attached to that stubborn core experience.

The difference is that it doesn’t matter to me with Disgaea. I love to advocate games to try new things, to push new IPs, and to genuinely expand the capabilities and experiences within the medium, but there will always be titles out there that we will want more of. Disgaea could feature the same core experience for many, many years to come and I’ll still buy and play every single one of them. Unlike Animal Crossing, Disgaea does have that fundamental depth within the core experience that allows its appeal to persist.

So what is this, the fifth Disgaea game in ten years? And it’s the first direct sequel in the series, forsaking even creating new casts and storylines? Bring it. Judging by all the new mild changes and the consistency of this series so far, I will happily squeeze hundreds of hours of strategic goodness out of Dimension 2.

#1 - Fire Emblem: Awakening

So here’s where I almost fucked up and released this list after one of the games had come out. But I made it…. barely.

Disgaea might be a series I praise for its consistency, but its always exciting to see a series that has so much potential finally getting everything right. Fire Emblem has had such a rocky and inconsistent path ever since it’s debut in North America on the GBA. Simply titled “Fire Emblem”, that seventh game in the series was pretty much a perfect, albeit fairly simple, representation of everything Fire Emblem had to offer.

Subsequent games, however, have failed to live up to the expectations put forth by that first taste. The problems have been numerous and varied, ranging form a lackluster jump from crisp pixel animation to underwhelming 3D, terrible voice acting, failed overhauls of the conversation system, slowing the pacing of combat to a crawl, imbalance brought upon by removing the rigidness of the progression, making the recruitment of characters needlessly obtuse, a large pool of characters that are near useless, outrageous difficulties being excused by less rigid saving structures…. yadda yadda yadda. The list goes on and on. While I will defend Path of Radiance and Sacred Stones as at least enjoyable games, the series hasn’t exactly produced an amazing title since that first non-Japanese release.

But perhaps now, my faith in the series will be rewarded. Awakening has had unbelievable praise in Japan, well beyond the expectations of one of Nintendo’s most niche and least approachable series. Even from diehard fans of the series, near universal acclaim for Awakening has been echoing out from Japan for the last year.

From what I’ve seen/heard, Awakening is the game where Fire Emblem finally overcomes those problems and hurdles. And it is doing so at a perfect time. When I was made this list, I thought that with all of the love for X-Com: Enemy Unknown from the gaming community, winning numerous awards and creating thousands of new X-Com fans, there would be a willingness for more players to jump into games like Fire Emblem. But I could not imagine the overwhelmingly positive reviews already pouring out for Awakening from sources you’d never expect to cover this fairly niche title.

I have always thought that Fire Emblem: Awakening had the potential to be one of the best games of the 2013, but now I see that it also could become one of the biggest.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go boot up my GBA to pass the time until Monday, whilst crying softly that I missed my chance to pick it up when it was leaked early across Canada.

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This blog is a crosspost of a series of posts on my personal blog: Yeti Sized Games. It's a blog about my thoughts on gaming, whether it be reviews, opinions, podcasts, game design, and, sometimes, my time with indie game development while working towards getting my degree. Check it out if you want.

Thanks for reading! This is the fourth part looking at those 25 games that has me excited for the rest of 2013. Sorry for the short wait, if anyone was waiting, it's been a busy couple of days. Also, I would like to thank @ZombiePie for featuring the first three parts of in the always awesome weekly Community Spotlight.

#10 - The God & Fate Revolution Paradox

I think I’m going to hate this game.

I mean, watch the trailer and see how long you can last. Seconds? Maybe even a minute? It’s hard to stomach it.

It’s almost everything I hate about anime and Japanese video games in one trailer: Voice acting that causes a steady stream of blood to drip from my ears, maid outfits, annoying J-Pop music with a grating vocalist, a female cast that all follow stereotypical anime personality tropes with character designs that are degradingly oversexualized, etc. etc.

Actually, it’s mostly that last one. I mean, just looking at some artwork and screenshots for the game is enough to depress the hell out of me. It’s the worst kind of pandering to the worst kind nerds in Japan, a market that unfortunately has an affinity to these types of games and, somehow, the money to consistently buy any merchandise surrounding them. It’s shit like this that makes me want to give up on Japanese games altogether.

But on the other hand…

The God & Fate Revolution Paradox is a spiritual sequel to the PSP game Zettai Hero Project, an excellently goofy spin on the roguelike genre that featured all of the insanely deep mechanics and customization that you’d expect from Nippon Ichi. And that’s pretty much all I needed to know about God & Fate to be excited. ZHP was one of the best games I played on my PSP and one of the reasons why I’m excited to see Nippon Ichi break out from the Strategy RPG genre with games like The Witch & The Hundred Knights.

So God & Fate is basically ZHP again, but improved upon and made more insane. A more Disgaea-like roguelike, if you will. One of the biggest changes is that you now have party members that follow you around (which you can also customize to an insane degree) much like in other roguelikes like Shiren. This adds a ton of elements and strategy of positioning, picking up allies, and throwing them across the map, all elements Disgaea fans should be familiar with. Lots of special moves have been added that will affect the positioning of your characters, allowing you to string special moves one after another to progress across the floor, decimating everything in your path. Heck, it even has the vibrant graphics and art are on par with Disgaea 4.

At the end of the day, I don’t really enjoy or approve of adding even more anime influence when Nippon Ichi loves to saturate their games with them anyway, but if it gets me an improved spiritual sequel to ZHP, I’ll play it regardless of how the aesthetic looks or how the story plays out.

I think I’m going to love this game.

#9 - The Next Great Sequel in the Saints Row Franchise

Well, this is awkward.

When I made this list, THQ was in dire straits, but was looking to come out of it whole and in one piece. Now, it’s in the middle of being chopped up and sold for parts, so who knows where Volition and the Saints Row franchise itself will end up.

So let’s look at the best case scenario here: Saints Row and Volition end up in the same place and their new owner sits down with the heads of Volition and just says “keep doing what you’re doing.” Yeah, I know. It’s a longshot to the point of fantasy, but due to how fucked this situation has become since I started writing this, I have no choice but to deal with ideals.

In that case, hallelujah, we’ve got the king of open world games back from near-death. The Third was such a big leap in quality for the series that it took a couple of boring, tired, and old Grand Theft Auto clones and made a unique and hilarious take on a genre I pretty much hate. It was the first time in an open world game where the first and last thing on my to-do list wasn’t “fuck around” and I actually stuck around to play it longer than your average movie. It had an interesting story filled with insanity, it improved upon the base gameplay mechanics of the genre to the point of actually being fun (an unfortunate rarity), and a sheer variety of ingenious mission and level design that had me gobbling up all 30 hours of perfectly paced content.

So Volition did the impossible and made an open world game I could actually like (love?). Props to them. Now comes the hard part: making a sequel to that game without losing any of the magic. Oh, and they have to do it by adapting a failed piece of The Third’s DLC into a full game.

Good luck.

That all sounds like a recipe for disaster, but at this point, I’d accept a Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood-esque sequel: a sequel that hits all the right notes of the original experience, even if it feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel. And that’s why this is so high on my list. If Volition is able to make a sequel that doesn’t flop, proving that The Third wasn’t just lightning in a bottle, then I’ll be impressed.

I might be asking too little from this sequel or setting the bar a bit too low, but remember that this is after the spectacular destruction of THQ and the improbable case where this game is shipped. So maybe just asking for this game to be made at all is asking too much.

#8 - Double Fine Adventure (AKA Reds)

I really like the direction Double Fine has gone in the past few years. As much as I love Psychonauts and Brütal Legend, the smaller, unique downloadable titles allow them to explore an expansive and insane list of settings, themes, audiences, and genres.

But there is something about those old LucasArts adventure games that never really transferred over to Double Fine. Yeah, there is a completely different group of people working on these games and Tim Schafer wasn’t the one wholly responsible for games like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle becoming masterpieces of the genre, but you can tell that Tim Schafer and co. have been trying desperately to recapture that balance of uniqueness and quality that LucasArts once symbolized. Unfortunately, Double Fine’s aforementioned diverse spectrum of titles hasn’t really let them specialize in any one genre. This jack-of-all-trades approach is probably why their quirky, unique titles are usually heavily flawed as well.

This is why it is so exciting to see Double Fine go back to the genre that started it all, 15 years after the critical darling, and commercial failure, Grim Fandango. There are plenty of old hands left at the studio who get to return to the genre they once loved. And that is not an insignificant event. It’s one of those things that people have been wishing, wondering, and whining about on message boards, podcasts, and blogs for years. It’s a game that, as a developer, you have to wait until the stars align and just the right opportunity comes along in order to make it.

This is also why Double Fine Adventure has a lot of weight on its shoulders. It’s the return to form for old masters of the craft, the resuscitation of a genre long thought dead, and the poster child for that whole 2012 Kickstarter phenomenon. There is no way this game won’t disappoint those who shovel this mountain of expectations upon Reds. But for me, I’m hoping that I can just be content with what it is, even if it fails to live up to those greats that came before it and continues the Double Fine tradition of making great, but flawed, games.

#7 - Pikmin 3

Okay, these write ups have gotten way out of hand. Time to reel it back in and just basically say this: Pikmin kicks ass. It is cute, it is challenging, it is stressful, and it is everything that an RTS on a console should strive for. The sequel made significant changes to the pacing and core strategy of the game and while it lost just as much as it gained, it was an entirely different experience that was just as enjoyable.

Pikmin 3 is making a lot of changes to the formula that has me shaking my head, but I look back at the jump from Pikmin to Pikmin 2 and I can’t help but have faith in Nintendo. Yeah, they haven’t been batting 1.000 as of late, but I’m hoping that during the game’s long development cycle, they were able to innovate with the title just enough to create an enjoyable new take on an old favourite.

#6 - Etrian Odyssey 4: Legends of the Titan

Etrian Odyssey is the opposite of approachable and modern game design. There is little in the way of checkpoints and there is no auto-save. Game overs are frequent and can leave you with hours of lost progress. There is only rough indication on where you need to go to progress or to complete quests. You frequently are backtracking and revisiting old content. Character progression can easily be botched without a plan, leaving you with a near useless teammate. To top it all off, the game is punishingly difficult, with a steep difficulty curve that forces you to be prepared for anything and adapt.

All of the above is deliberate and why the series works so well. Etrian Odyssey does not hold your hand or talk down to you. It asks you to be an adult, figure it out yourself, and roll a new healer because you fucked up the last one. If anything goes wrong in Etrian Odyssey, it is your own damn fault. Trapped in a dungeon with a healer with 0 MP? Shouldn’t have progressed onwards without an item to warp out. Can’t take down this boss because your front line keeps dying? Shouldn’t have specced that warrior in pure offense now, eh? Can’t find the exit? Well, you would be able to if you mapped the goddamn route out correctly.

All of this sounds semi-abusive, but its actually, somehow, quite the relaxing title. Progressing onwards into the unknown, working hard to get that new piece of armor or finish that quest, exploring the nooks and crannies of each floor, and slowly, steadily becoming stronger and more confident in your team as you progress is one of the most rewarding feelings you can find in gaming. And due to the nature of portable games, it’s always there for you. You can set it down at any time and just as easily flip it open to continue your quest. There’s no huge commitment to it, there is no huge reward for finishing it, as merely progressing through it, bit by bit, is reward enough.

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This blog is a crosspost of a series of posts on my personal blog: Yeti Sized Games. It's a blog about my thoughts on gaming, whether it be reviews, opinions, podcasts, game design, and, sometimes, my time with indie game development while working towards getting my degree. Check it out if you want.

Thanks for reading the third part of the 25 games I am most excited to get my hands on in the coming year. I won't bore you and just jump into the list right away.

#15 - Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Sly is still one of the best 3D platforming series out there. It had an incredibly solid stealth-platforming base established in the Thievius Raccoonus that morphed into open world shenanigans sprinkled with incredibly varied and unique missions that constantly both exploited and twisted that platforming you grew to love. It was one of my favourite series to come out of its era and, while I think that the Sly series earned its little break in order to keep it from getting stale, it’s sad that Sucker Punch’s current generation efforts didn’t resonate with me as much as Sly.

Now the series is in relatively untested hands and I’d be lying if I said I was confident in this game. This fourth title seems to have taken the story at the end of Honor Among Thieves and tossed it out the window. With the time elements and multiple members of the Sly Cooper family, it seems that the gameplay is going down a quite gimmicky route, even as compared to the original trilogy. Worst of all, from my very limited time playing it at PAX, it just doesn’t feel like that solid platforming core has been maintained.

This was a hard game to put on this list, purely because, like I said, I lack confidence in it. I remember how the Jak series “came back” on the PSP, never even coming close to recapturing the original trilogy’s charm. I’m worried that the exact same thing is happening here.

Ultimately though, this list is not a manner of whether I think the game will be good or bad, but how excited I am to see the final product and determine its quality first hand, rather than through pure speculation. And I am way more excited than I am apprehensive to dive into a new Sly adventure.

#14 - Guacamelee!

This game needs to be on this list purely for that name alone. I mean, that’s just brilliant. Also, it’s really fun to say. Guacamelee. Guuuaaaacamelee. Gua-ca-me-lee. GUACAMELEEE!

But to bring it back to the game itself, metroidvania games are always welcome in my book. Add into it some cool melee combat elements, the old standby of parallel worlds ala Link to the Past that impacts every aspect of the game, fluid platforming, and some absolutely gorgeous art and animation with a fantastic sense of style.

I mean, look at dat standing pose. Look at it. LOOK AT IT!

#13 - Super Time Force

Tagging out Guacamelee for the other Toronto indie superstar, Capybara’s new game is looking to be something special. Super Time Force is one of those games where at any point in the game, anything can possibly happen. Anything. Get a mission to go back in time to fight a cyborg T-Rex? Stopping the dinosaur extinction by destroying the meteor? Meteor turns out to be some sort of robot? All of that happened in the PAX demo. When that is presented to you as the standard experience within the game, anything is possible.

But what’s best about this game is just how fun it is to play. There have been quite a few Contra-esque games in the past few years from indie and small japanese developers, but Super Time Force shines due to its Super Meat Boy approach to death, difficulty, challenge, and level design. Death comes quickly on any stage, against any obstacle, but the stage itself is only seconds long. Quick and easy refreshes, along with the ability to save past selves (who are still interacting with the environment simultaneous to you) to create checkpoints, allow you to die again and again and still feel like you’re making progress. Plus, being able to choose classes at each respawn, with each giving you a completely different way of approaching combat, just adds layers of depth, strategy, and enjoyment onto the game.

All in all, it looks like a simple game with cool mechanics and an infinite possibility for insanity. But it looks like it will be incredibly solid, simple, cool, insane game and I cannot wait to play more.

#12 - The Last of Us

The Last of Us is a strange beast. Since the very first trailer of the game, the focus has always been on the characters. It’s been pushed as a personal story, a journey following the gruff, Troy Baker voiced Joel and the young, somewhat naiive, Ellen Page-look-alike Ellie through a post apocalyptic America filled with fungus zombies, supply shortages, and groups of thieves and highwaymen. Oh, and they (and the world around them) will be very, very pretty.

And that is pretty much all we know about the game. Like at all. There have been early promises of this and that, but from the footage we have seen, that’s all we really know. We don’t know how important any of the systems are. We don’t know whether the game is extremely linear, ala Uncharted, or how much choice is played into the game. How deep are the repercussions for playing in a brutal manner? What is even the whole point of this journey of Ellie & Joel? We’re gonna have to wait until May, I guess.

But I know what The Last of Us is striving for. Like all forms of The Walking Dead, it is digging into the way-too-popular post-apocalyptic story and grabbing the human story out of it. Like Bioshock Infinite, it is trying to push the lives, the decisions, and the interactions of two individuals into the spotlight and watch them grow and struggle to overcome their obstacles. Like Uncharted, it is chasing after that cinematic element and weaving it into every aspect of the game, for better or worse.

Even if I don’t know everything I would like to know about it, The Last of Us is still one of the most promising AAA titles this year. Naughty Dog has proven themselves in the past and I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt despite the uncertainty of a big budget new title at the end of a console’s lifespan.

#11 - Skulls of the Shogun

Look, 17-Bit. We need to talk. I know you’ve had a weird development cycle for this game. I know you’ve been trying to put this out for what seems like ages. But of all the games on my list that should have been out by now, this is the one. I’ve played it before. It’s great. It’s a game that is right up my alley and it seems like a game that will have a lot of content to it.

But c’mon guys. I know that the end-of-game crunch is killing you, so I’m not mad at you for not getting this out. But I can’t say I’m not disappointed. So I can see that you probably need some encouragement after missing the Windows 8 launch. But that’s over now. It’s in the past. You’ve got a kick ass game coming to a plethora of platforms. It’s got a killer style to it with mechanics that remind me of greats like Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, and Phantom Brave. Guys, this game is gonna rock.

So tie the fucking bow on this title and get it out there. It’s gonna be great.

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This blog is a crosspost of a series of posts on my personal blog: Yeti Sized Games. It's a blog about my thoughts on gaming, whether it be reviews, opinions, podcasts, game design, and, sometimes, my time with indie game development while working towards getting my degree. Check it out if you want.

The next 5 in the list are below, but I'd also like to redirect you to a short list I made of the games I thought would come out in 2012, but unfortunately were stuck in development. This covers a few games that will be noticeably missing, such as Bioshock Infinite and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

Also, I won't be posting this one to the General Discussion boards. I'm trying to finish all of these blogs within the next couple of days and I think that posting 5 blogs onto the boards in quick succession amounts to little more than a cry for attention. Maybe I'll post the 3rd one and skip the 4th. Or maybe I'll post only the 5th one. We'll see? *shrug*

#20 - Dark Souls II

Confession time! I’m not done Dark Souls. I mean, I’m not even close. I’m only a few hours in, but I played enough of it to “get it.” I see where the appeal lies, why so many people were enraptured by this brutally difficult and masochistic series. I’m honestly excited to play more of Dark Souls, and its spiritual prequel, when I get around to it.

Dark Souls II offers more of that, but with the opportunity to improve some of the rougher edges of the series. I’d be lying if I said that Dark Souls was a perfect game, as there were many aspects that rubbed me the wrong way. Another attempt with a nice coat of polish seems to be exactly what this series needs, even if the end product only amounts to being "just more Dark Souls".

#19 - Monster Hunter 4

Much like Dark Souls, I haven’t played enough of this series as I should, but I’ve still invested well over 20-30 hours into Freedom Unite and Tri. Again, the appeal of the series has clicked for me. I know why I should be playing these games and I understand why so many others sing its praises. So I’m excited to jump into a new start for the series. With no multiple versions or expansions, everyone will be starting off on the same foot here and I’ll be there in the thick of it, finally being able to play the series both online and on-the-go.

#18 - Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

Again, a series I have not played enough of. I never had a Game Boy Colour back in the day and, since Shantae is quite rare now, my ability to go back and play that WayForward classic is unfortunately hindered. I have played quite a bit of its DSiWare sequel (Risky’s Revenge) though. It’s a great game to have on your DS whenever you boot it up, always available for you to hop in for some metroidvania goodness here and there. My relaxed pace through the game hasn’t lead me to completion yet, but it does have me very excited for the sequel.

#17 - The Cave

With this (kinda) spiritual sequel to Maniac Mansion, except with more platforming and character focused storytelling, it’s looking like Ron Gilbert will finally be working on a title worthy of his history and legend. Not to say that Deathspank was utterly terrible, but it’s just that Monkey Island and those other LucasArts classics will always have a special place in heart. To see Ron working back in that realm again is reason enough for this game to be on my list.

Also, I have always had a soft spot for “Be careful what you wish for”, monkey paw-esque storylines and The Cave is promising three different ones each playthrough, along with some clever puzzles built around each character’s special abilities and the interaction between the three heroes (?) of your journey.

What is there not to like?

#16 - Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine

Couch Co-op is one of the greatest joys in gaming. You have some friends over, cook a nice meal, then all sit on a comfy couch, and proceed to start yelling, punching, screaming, and laughing at each other until the early morning. It’s something that I get to do less and less as I grow older, but it's always been the time I value most with games.

Unfortunately, games with good couch co-op have become few and far between since the glory days of N64 and Dreamcast, being replaced by online interaction. Online certainly has allowed genres like shooters and fighting games to flourish, but when you’re playing these types of games, these experiences meant to be shared by friends in the same room, online feels more like a compromise than an easier solution. Monaco, thankfully, has the best of both worlds, but coordinating, infiltrating, and escaping with the loot with the three friends beside me is what has me eagerly awaiting this game's release.

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This blog is a crosspost of a series of posts on my personal blog: Yeti Sized Games. It's a blog about my thoughts on gaming, whether it be reviews, opinions, podcasts, game design, and, sometimes, my time with indie game development while working towards getting my degree. Check it out if you want.

So I've been looking at what's to come and I think I've narrowed down about 25 games I am dying to play in the next year. Come December, I think we will all agree this won't be the Top 25 Best Games of the Year, but these are the games I find most promising and exciting in this industry for me. I'll be posting this Top 25 in 5 pieces, with 5 being posted almost everyday (almost being the key word there. Really bad at keeping things on time). Anyway, here's the first 5 on the list:

#25 - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers

While technically an updated port of a 16 year old Sega Saturn game that never came out here, I'm excited to get a chance to play anything "new" in the SMT series. The look back at the 32-bit era Persona ports on the PSP were not exactly enjoyable, but they were interesting to at least examine, especially when you contrast them against the critically acclaimed series Persona is now. So I guess mark this one down as more of a historical curiosity than a game worth being excited about.

#24 - Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

I’m not really much of an anime fan. It’s a weird thing to admit, given how many elements Japanese games just straight up lift from anime and how much enjoyment I get out of those Japanese titles. It’s like saying you don’t like chicken, but you eat KFC all the time.

However, much like most of the world, Studio Ghibli is the one source in anime I will always pay attention to. They make fantastic films with powerful storytelling, but how much of their movies’ magic will transfer into a video game is what really matters. My hopes aren’t exactly set incredibly high for that, as I don’t really trust that they can effectively capture the Ghibli essence without really understanding the medium.

But I do trust Level-5. They’ve had some stinkers in the past, but they’ve risen to quite the powerhouse in Japanese game development, especially in JRPGs with their involvement in the Dragon Quest series. Regardless of how much Ghibli is actually in the game beyond the art style, I know that this will be a mechanically solid RPG.

P.S. What in the hell is going on with that guy’s face?

#23 - Tearaway

Media Molecule has been nothing but a house of disappointment. I never could look past LittleBigPlanet’s loose and frustrating base platforming mechanics in order to enjoy its incredible creative tools. Its sequel solved none of the originals problems, only adding a larger variety of disappointments.

This is their big second chance and I think it might just win me over. The animation in the game and the commitment to that papercraft style is stunning. The gimmicky Vita real world interaction seems to be used in at least cool ways. Most of all? The game doesn’t look like it will depend on tight controls to explore its cool landscapes. I have my doubts, but maybe this will work out.

#22 - South Park: The Stick of Truth

Ni no Kuni and South Park are basically the same pitch: a popular name in animation and a top rated RPG developer join forces to create a simplistic RPG with the animation, style, and story worthy of the animation it is based on.

Now, I don’t really think South Park is going to be a better game than Ni no Kuni, especially considering the absolutely awful run of South Park games over the years, but I have a little bit more faith that the South Park essence could be successfully captured in a video game. From the moment I first saw Stick of Truth, it reminded me of all the reasons why I loved the show. While I don’t I watch South Park regularly anymore, I’m still very excited to see how this one turns out.

#21 - The Witch and the Hundred Knights

There is a golden rule* that I have learned when it comes to one of my favourite developers, Nippon Ichi: Never. Ever. Ever play a game in which they collaborate on or in which they purely publish. Mugen Souls, Last Rebellion, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Trinity Universe, Cross Edge. All of these games? Complete and utter pieces of shit. Almost offensively so. To the point that if someone were to look at the catalogue of Nippon Ichi’s games, these stinkers would almost invalidate the great games they have produced.

(*The only exception to this rule is System Prisma, who are actually owned by Nippon Ichi. They released the Cladun games which were actually pretty good. Simplistic, but good.)

Thankfully, despite not being a Strategy RPG, Witch and the Hundred Knights is purely a Nippon Ichi developed game, so I am expecting quality. Not much has been shown of the game yet, but it looks to be a vibrant, stage based action RPG that almost reminds me of Little King Story with the the RTS aspects toned down. Plop a dark, yet still Disgaea-like, story on top of that and I can definitely get behind this.

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This blog is a crosspost of a series of posts on my personal blog: Yeti Sized Games. It's a blog about my thoughts on gaming, whether it be reviews, opinions, podcasts, game design, and, sometimes, my time with indie game development while working towards getting my degree. Check it out if you want.

Game of the "Year"

So, Giant Bomb, the Giant Bomb community, and pretty much this whole industry has gone crazy over Game of the Year in the past week. And why not? The VGA's happened last week, displaying a surprising level of competence this year and choosing a winner in many of the categories I can't really argue with. So let's all get excited guys! It's time to record some podcasts, wrangle in some special guests, shoot some goofy video segments, and display our lists so we can all discuss, debate, and, ultimately, celebrate the best fucking games this medium has to offer! Video Games! Fuck Yeah, guys! Right?

To which I say, "bah humbug". Now, I'm not here to say that we shouldn't celebrate the awesome achievements in our industry, but just that we're kinda forgetting a few important things in all of this jubilation.

The obvious one is that it's still December. Games are still releasing that, by just the unfortunate time they release, will hit this weird point where no one is going to consider them. They could be the best game that year, but no one will notice it. Yes, yes what good has come out of December, you ask? When September, October, & November are done with their deluge, what dares show its face after Black Friday, let alone after the calendar flips? Well, quite a number of games over these past few years: Pushmo, Mighty Switch Force, The Old Republic, Far Cry 3, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, Mario Kart 7, Trine 2, Hawken, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks... Even the much beloved Persona 4 launched in NA during this holiday month. I know that, even if every game on that list is capable of being enjoyed enough to be celebrated, they were overlooked by far too many.

But it's not just what games are released in December, but what people get in December. Namely, gifts. 'Tis the season of giving and all that jazz, which is warm and heartfelt and all, but what it really means is that a LOT of games are going to be bought and wrapped up until the inevitable day of unwrapping. I understand that this isn't really the case for the enthusiast media, but for the 15 year old that only makes enough to buy a few games a year, for the college student worried more about food than games (at least for those who have their priorities straight), and for many of the knowledgeable folks on this site and, yes, even those within the industry itself, a few of those games that they will unwrap in the closing days of the year may be the best games they play.

(Yeah, I know the holidays are not the same for everyone and I can't speak for all faiths, but with the 100 metre tall godzilla that the holiday season has become, I hope you can forgive me for generalizing.)

A Time To Celebrate

So, why have it now, anyway? The aforementioned fall deluge is barely complete, it's bountiful harvest of AAA and indie games alike are still fresh. These months release more quality titles a week than most people could feasibly play in that timeframe. What possesses people to believe they can experience all that is offered to them, even if they have a narrow or refined taste in games? I find that, without the time for reflection and catching up on titles, the conversation quickly becomes less of "what I thought were the strongest titles this year" and more of "what I actually had time to play."

In films, there are still sites, bloggers, and critics awarding their Movie of the Year awards just like us, but the film industry has some clear advantages in this area of celebration. First, movies don't have a big rush of content in the closing months of the year. Instead, their big rush happens in the summer months so DVD's and the like can experience a nice boost in sales during the holiday bonanza. Also, it doesn't take 5-50 hours to watch a movie. You could watch the 20 biggest movies this year in the time it takes to play Persona 4 Golden or Xenoblade Chronicles.

But even with those advantages, the biggest celebration in movies, the Academy Awards, doesn't even announce their winners for another two and a half months. Heck, they don't even announce their nominations until the end of January. Even with most of their choices for the best films of the year already locked by the time snow starts falling, the movie industry still allows a large gap of reflection and judgement to actually make the right choices.

Hearing about the insane weekend the bomb squad had, just trying to fit all of the titles they've missed in the last year into a short 72 hour time frame, doesn't it seem that we're all rushing this a bit? Patrick is going to be finishing Virtue's Last Reward soon, Ryan seems like he'd want more time with FTL, and Brad missed everything just to make sense of that whole Mass Effect situation. How would the whole discussion on their end change if they delayed it, if only for a month of catching up and reflection, especially with a nice break coming up for the holidays? If anyone could go against the flow and do Game of the Year in January, it's Giant Bomb.

As for us humble forum posters and hobby bloggers, why do we need to make our lists to hit an arbitrary date? It's exciting to talk about all these amazing games from the past year, but what will we lose if we take that extra month or two or three? Will the games of the still-near past lack all of their appeal once the calendar rolls over? Will the relatively dry times (though its growing more fertile) of January & February distract us from looking back at what we've missed, something many of us will do anyway?

Finish Your Plate

I'm not naïve. I'm not saying that any amount of time will allow one to experience every game in a year while still keeping up with the newest, hottest titles, but I'm just saying that with all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and with all of us growing our backlogs one game at a time, consider slowing your pace down a bit, sitting back with a nice drink, and just enjoying the games you have. And when the year is done and the games are played, then come forth with your list. I'm sure the discussion will be better for it.

So as for me, I'll be waiting until March to consider posting a Game of the Year list. Last year, those three months allowed me to play 6 or 7 titles that actually had a chance or ended up on my Top 10. Looking at the games I have yet to play this year, like Zero Escape, Last Story, X-com, and Torchlight II, I think I'll need a little extra time.