Since I'm not a big fan of paying for the privilege to act as a beta tester, I tend to refrain from buying games at launch. Waiting for a sale not only saves me money, it also allows me to enjoy my games fully patched up with most of the release day wrinkles ironed out.
This year, however, I happened to jump on the bandwagon earlier than ever. I even got my first pre-order.
All these games are played on a PC, with an Xbox controller where needed.
My love for the first one made me pre-order this, and holy poop smear, did it live up to my expectations. Lucky for me, the EU release was a couple of days behind the US, so I was able to read all the reviews before placing my pre-order and get the Mechromancer class for free.
I loved this game. Loved it. I'm lucky, in that I have a small cadre of friends my own age with just as much time to spend on video games as me, so I played through both playthroughs in co-op, leveling a bunch of characters and just having a blast the entire time. We didn't really mess with the raid bosses, but I might revisit them, as I'm pretty tempted to S-rank this mother during 2013.
GOTY without a doubt.
I hate stealth games. Hate them. Because I'm an impatient and sloppy player who just want to wreck fools and have fun. Learning patterns and shit is way to much work.
That is, until I played Mark of the Ninja. Not only did it teach me the value of pacing myself and picking my moments, it made me feel awesome while I was learning.
After finishing this game I've since learned to love Deus Ex:HR, and will probably crawl further down the stealth rabbit hole during 2013.
Turns out I love learning new things. Thank you Mark of the Ninja, for making me a better person.
I picked this one up for super cheap during a sale this fall, and I'm really happy that I did. Not only did I learn how to pace my lust for open-worldly wanton chaos and focus on the story of a sandbox game, it gave me the satisfaction of "understanding" a game that I initially found baffling.
At first, the gun play in this game felt frustrating and nigh-on broken. I'd break again and again at embarrassingly small groups of enemies, while using cover and meticulously creeping forward. At some point, however, something clicked and I embraced the loose and frantic bullettimey Hong Kong action shooting style the developers probably intended, and the game moved fast up on my list.
I still havent found all the lockboxes, but the game wont leave my hard drive until I do.
Never encountered any save bugs and I cried like a child at the end. Bought it around the time when episode two came around, and the waiting for new episodes added to my enjoyment.
FUCK YEAH!
Not only is FTL a great game in and of it self, it made me believe that I could get into bigger and more complicated space sims. So while I love this game for what it is, I'm also giving it mad props for making me try GalCivII and Endless Space, games that gave me several hours of enjoyment, and will probably continue to do so for years to come.
With Dawnguard and Hearthfire coming out this year, I sorta kinda feel justified to include Skyrim on list this year. One of my favorite games of all time, and I can't wait for the next DLC to drop. After pouring countless hours into this game, I'm not even close to seeing all this game has to offer. Hell, I'd been playing on and off for eight months before I even saw Falkreath for the first time.
I'm a sore loser. I hate being bad at games. As mentioned earlier, pattern recognition is not one of my strong points. But after mulling over Dark Souls for months after it got its PC release, I finally gave in during a Steam sale, and goddammit this game is great. I might never finish it. I'm ok with that.
I'm old. This game reminds me of my youth. Sometimes that's all I need. However, Grimrock offers more to me than blatant nostalgia for a time long gone. It's fun, fast and good looking, and with the Steam Workshop it has the potential to keep entertaining me for a long time into the future.
It's not the best game I've played this year. At times it was downright frustrating to slog through some of the encounters. But the story hit a sweet spot with me, and the wonderful scenery made me often just stop and look.
I got it for super cheap, so it was worth every penny, but a part of me wonder what this game could have been if the actual gameplay were better. Even so, still one of the best games I played that was released this year.
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