2012 Year in Review

2012 is drawing to a close, and rather than worry myself over trivial matters like the fiscal cliff, I figured I'd take the time to reflect on what was an interesting, if not overwhelmingly strong, year in video gaming.

Let's begin with an overview of my general gaming stats for the year.

STATS

Total number of distinct games played: 117

Total hours spent: 1,702

Hours by Platform

The above table is skewed somewhat by the fact that I am a music game addict, and so if I remove the hours spent playing Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz from the table, we get the breakdown below:

A couple observations: first, I probably play too many video games. I should probably immerse myself in more productive hobbies like exercising, watching reality TV shows, and firing assault rifles at cardboard targets, but somehow I can't bring myself to be bothered. I work hard sitting on my ass in front of a computer screen all day, so when I'm off work, I want to spend plenty of time sitting on my couch in front of a television screen holding a controller or tapping frantically on my keyboard and mouse.

Secondly: this was most definitely the year of the PC for me. I had invested in a gaming-class rig relatively late last year, and after some initial hesitance in converting over to it for many game styles, the vastly superior performance with even bare-bones console ports had won me over. For the foreseeable future, I will be buying all new games on the PC unless they are console exclusives I really care about or there is a tremendously significant multiplayer component that interests me. Both of those categories seem to be growing vanishingly small these days.

It's interesting that my time spent between the PS3 and Xbox 360 was almost identical (excluding music games which I have on the PS3, of course.) Prior to making the jump to PC, I had treated the PS3 as my primary platform by a wide margin, and most of the games I bought early in the year on consoles were PS3 versions, which means that the 360 had a sizable advantage in my overall interest level, and that was primarily due to what I felt was a much stronger overall selection of XBLA games this year compared to PSN-exclusive offerings.

I'll make my Top 10 (actually, 11) list in a separate post. Prior to that, however, I will attempt to give some recognition both to games I played and greatly enjoyed but didn't quite make the list as well as those that I would have loved to have played but unfortunately needed to put off until next year or beyond.

Possible Top 10 Games That The Finite Nature of Time Precluded

As dedicated (or obsessive, depending on one's perspective) a gamer as I am, the demands of a full-time job and a live-in girlfriend make it so even I can't possibly get to everything I'm interested in playing for any given year. This is a partial list of the games I just didn't get around to but fully intend to dive into sometime after that big ball drops later tonight.

• XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Dishonored
• Darksiders II (I still haven't even played the first one...for shame)
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted
• Syndicate
• Torchlight II
• Yesterday
• Lone Survivor
• Deponia
• Hitman: Absolution

In most of these cases, I haven't even touched the game yet even though I own it. Need for Speed: Most Wanted is the sole exception; I played a little bit of it before deciding to wait because the performance on the PC was very inconsistent. Rather than force it to 30 frames per second (which is a perfectly viable solution) I opted to hold out to see if EA would patch it or Nvidia beta drivers might help. I'm still waiting patiently to play the game under optimal circumstances, but I have a feeling if nothing happens within a few more months I'll just bite the bullet and play it at 30 fps.

Honorable Mention

The following is a list of games that I cut from the lower portions of my list, but only with great trepidation. There are just only so many slots to fill, and these were the unfortunate victims of pretty granular and subjective comparison.

• Journey
• Dust: An Elysian Tail
• Borderlands 2
• Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy
• SSX
• Spec Ops: The Line
• Diablo III
• Max Payne 3