GOTY 2012
These games had to come out this year in the U.S. So games like The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings for 360 and HD collections are disqualified from this list as they have seen an American release in 2011 or before.
List items
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Episode 1: Alright, so this is how it's gonna be.
Episode 2: Oh man, that was harsh.
Episode 3: Oh god...
Episode 4: NOOOOO!
Episode 5: Oh... oh... ohhhhh... shit.
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XCOM is an interesting strategy game. This game is hard, very hard. But it never gets hard enough to frustrate. Instead when things go south I wanted to go back in and try to tip everything in my favor. This game wasn't gonna beat me. This game is constantly stressful. When you're in a mission and no aliens show up as you traverse the map you fear for the lives of your soliders. When you finish a mission to return to the base you fear the loss of a country's support. You never have enough for all of the things you need instead having to make a lot of hard choices and constant compromises. When things finally go your way you'll have felt that you've earned it bringing you the most rewarding gaming experience this year.
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Sleeping Dogs may be derivative of other games but it blends all of those elements together in such a way as to make it feel like its own thing The beautifully rendered city of Hong Kong goes a long way to contribute to the identity of Sleeping Dogs. The brutal nature of its Batman inspired combat system makes the gameplay incredibly fun. The crime story is genuinely interesting in spite of the fact that it's a genre filled with tropes we've all seen before. Almost everything comes together to create a game that surpasses its roots.
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I rarely play any games for the multi-player but my friend and I had a co-op experience that couldn't be beat. Running through the massive world of Pandora combining powers and crashing into cliff faces to fuck with each other while driving was some of the most fun I've had in a game all year.
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This little indy gem has an amazing art-style and a wondrous soundtrack. Almost everything about this game screams clever. The rotating world, the made up language, witholding one of Gomez's main abilities until after the end game has been reached once. This game is fantastic and deserves a spot on anyone's top ten.
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Assassin's Creed 3 is a huge game with plenty to keep people occupied. The change of setting another assassin protagonist goes a long way to make this franchise feel fresh again. The frontier makes for a beautiful environment that's fun to traverse. It's also interesting to play a game where I'm more familiar with the history this tries to act apart of. With a lot to do in a setting less visited this earns a spot on my top 10.
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Mass Effect 3 serves as the capstone to the Shepard/Reaper narrative. For me, most of it worked. Mass Effect 3 has some of the best moments you will see in the Mass Effect franchise as a whole, Tuchanka, and the Rannoch missions being two examples. Mass Effect 1 may have the better plot and Mass Effect 2 may be more consistent in terms of it's quality but Mass Effect 3 elevates the gameplay and brings you closer to the characters of the ME world. The characters being the strength of the series. This may not be the best in the series but that doesn't make it any less than a fantastic experience.
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I've always liked these games. They were always about over the top fighting and flashy attacks, and that's just fun. At first I didn't like this game as much as the previous installment because of the gimped single-player experience, something they are supposed to bring back for Storm 3, but eventually it became the game I played the most this year. They improved the gameplay of the older games to give the combat a faster pace with more back and forth taking place. Also it has the worst rap in the world.
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Tokyo Jungle is a surprise. On the surface it seems like a stupid game with a stupid concept that would come together to make a tedious, boring game with poor controls. Fortunately these people knew what they were making delivering an addictive, self-aware, and well controlled experience. It's dumb but a dumb I can get behind.
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It takes a lot to get me to like a technical heavy fighter considering my dislike of fighting games. P4A, while still kind of unapproachable for beginners, has enough content to keep me happy. The single player modes flesh out the Persona universe in very interesting ways. The interactions between P4 and P3 characters is what holds this game together. As a sequel to Persona 4 and an epilogue to Persona 3 it's worth a look, just don't go online unless you think you can handle it.
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