I'm afraid this is the most I can do for a "best of" list for all of last year. I think I only purchased maybe 6 games in total that were all released in 2012, so I'm only doing three. Maybe this time next year I'll have a much bigger list, but if you end up reading this one then I want to thank you for doing so.
I didn't expect to love this game as much as I do. I'm still playing it as I write this but I don't need to finish it to know it's my #1. That said, word is the ending is disapointing. My only guess is that Vaas dies and is replaced by a new antagonist, or judging from all the psychedelic shit it's probably something that's over the top in dumb. But as for the rest of this game, the stealth, the shooting, the crazy, completely unexpected insanity that can happen while trying to take over a pirate outpost, mowing down bears with a fucking LMG, mother fucking Vaas, all of it is fantastic.
Now aside from some complaints I have, like the clunky menu UI which I suspect is only a PC thing from not being optimized for using a mouse, there's also some graphics glitches that literally everyone is experiencing that forces me to restart the game. When it's not glitching out, however, this game I have to say is gorgeous.
I also love the super visceral stealth mechanics of being able to knife a guy from below just by jumping on him, and then quickly knifing the guy beside him without the need to even push a button. Or knifing someone and then pulling the pin on their grenade and kicking them into a crowd of dudes is also a fun choice. But of course it all just boils down to throwing a rock the opposite direction to distract them to sneak by, but I never get tired it. This game is an experience to be had, for sure.
(Yes I will talk about Diablo)
I don't know if I have much to say here. All I know is that Diablo III had too many design choices that drove me away from it. At least in Torchlight II I have the freedom to do things, unlike in D3 where your limited to how many skills you can use at a time, among other design choices that were made in that game. I dp understand the idea behind it though, like deck building in a TCG/CCG, trying to make combinations of skills that work together to a greater effect is cool, but it's just not my thing.
Also, no battle.net. And yes, this is a legitimate complaint. I don't know how the servers are now since I stopped playing in July, but I had died too many times to count just from server lag, WHILE PLAYING COMPLETELY ALONE. For me, every time I would log on my frame rate would suffer for the first 20 minutes of gameplay because of my server connection trying to steady itself. It would be fine after a while, but dying because my game had come to a complete stop while the enemies were still attacking me is utter bullshit.
All that in mind, Torchlight II fulfills that need for the next Diablo II better, which is really what this is all about. Blizzard were the ones to make a sequal to that highly coveted game, and for what they made they get points for trying. But Runic didn't have the expectations and hype that they had to live up to, and thus they just made a simple dungeon crawler that plays like Diablo II, with a few ideas of their own that don't get in the way of that old design (pets that can go to town for you and buy/sell equipment, the mapworks [which by the way was better endgame content than "beat the game again on a harder difficulty" was], and lastly the Charge bar).
It was either this or Mark of The Ninja, but since I haven't finished the latter I guess its this one.
I feel like this would have be a little lower on the list if there had been any more games on here, because frankly I think I'm still attached to the first one even more. Borderlands 1 is one my all time favorite games, and because I've been playing it constantly for 3 years I don't think there was any way that this one was going to win me over in only 3 and a half months. Regardless, I think the new classes are good. The humor was a little hit and miss for me in some places, but I don't think Tiny Tina is absolutely terrible like SOME people seem to think she is.
My biggest gripe with this game, however, is that I just don't think its as fun as the first one. The character classes aren't as powerful as they used to be. The Berserker, while probably BL1's weakest character, was by far the most fun and my personal favorite. Nothing even comes close to him in this game.
I also thought the games story had one too many plot twists. *Spoilers* The Guardian Angel working for Jack the entire time kind of blew me away, but finding out that she's actually a Siren, who in fact is also Jack's daughter, was too much. Thinking that Angel was just an A.I. who turns on Jacks after feeling guilty for betraying would have made her a better character rather than an abused child of a greedy, over-protective father.
Overall, this game should be more than what it transpired to be. A sequel that doesn't expand beyond the boundaries of its predecessor very much is a disappointing one to me.
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