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DrLariat

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Mozart's Top Ten Games of 2012 (Everyone still loves lists right?)

This list is missing a lot of the big releases this year, things like Halo, Mass Effect, etc. I didn't actually play any of those. I bet Halo 4 is really good but I still need to finish ODST and Reach before I consider getting into that. When I think back on the games of 2012 it seems like a bit of a bummer year, there was not a lot of releases that I had to have, plenty of games that looked cool, but I'd rather wait until they are dirt cheap on Steam as I tend to buy far more games then I actually have time to play, or when I do have time, I just play the same game endlessly. That last detail is why a game from 2010 ended up rather high in this year's list, as I played that game far more than any other this year.

List items

  • FTL is everything I want in a space game, random encounters and exploration, assigning crew to fix and man various posts, adjusting power levels. Since the development and release of space based MMO's such as Star Trek and Old Republic I had done much daydreaming, trying to envision how a multiplayer space ship simulation would work. FTL gets all of it right except the multiplayer part, which is fine because it's easier to just play with yourself all the time anyway.

  • To every single game personality across the wide internet that has said in the past "give it up nerds, a new XCom will never be financially viable and no studio will ever attempt such a thing, the market has changed." FUCK YOU! You were wrong, so fucking wrong, so very, very fucking wrong. Sure it isn't as complex as old XCom, it is a hell of an attempt to remake a game that until this release, no game has ever come close to emulating. Now a new generation can know the joy of naming a squad of troopers after friends and family, only to watch them mercilessly gunned down by hostile aliens in no time flat.

  • This game is fucking broken. I got halfway into it and it deleted all my progress. Normally something like that is a one way ticket to the bottom or off any kind of best of list. In The Walking Dead's case, the half I did get to play was so engaging that it gets all the way up to number 3 despite being broken. A lot of games have had moral choices, but in those games the choices were always a clear path, "what do you want to be? evil dude that kicks puppies? or nice guy that pats children on the head?" The Walking Dead eschews all of that nonsense and simply says, "things are really bad, now please choose between fucked, and fucked."

  • In my 2010 list I said Star Trek Online was boring after a month and only on the list because it was a game I had played that year. In the years since it's release the developers have done a decent job making a mediocre game more tolerable, there are now many things to work towards and a lot of content has been added. Unlike many MMO's where your character defines what you do in the game, Star Trek Online allows you to set up a character and then captain a wide array of ships, all of which can change your experience drastically. With many MMO's a character can grow stale leading you to roll a new character in hopes to change up game play, in Star Trek Online you simply change the ship you are flying and a new play style awaits you. It also doesn't hurt that the player base is dumb as rocks allowing anyone with a brain to take full advantage of the economy and become a space baron with all the nicest toys.

  • The developers for Spec Ops: The Line had said something along the lines of "we knew we were making an unmemorable 3rd person military shooter so we decided to give it a story you will not forget." The game play, while serviceable is a bog standard cover shooter, what makes this game stand out is a story that will make you question the sanity of any future protagonist that decides to make a mission personal and go the extra step to complete their goals. The little art touches that clue you in to the fact that your character is either losing his mind, or long past that point, make me long for more games that explore the fragility of our perceived reality.

  • I wish Binary Domain was a better game. The premise starts off a bit Blade Runner with game play out of Gears of War. Renegade robots that are perfect human replicas are among us and even more unsettling, have no idea they aren't actually human. That is until one has an accident and notices that isn't bone beneath his flesh. Concepts like that are what gets me hard, unfortunately the story runs out of steam around 3/4ths in and it's time to trot out some cliche twists. Between the story that can't finish the race and game play that while fine, but never amazing, Binary Domain ends up as a bit of a disappointment.

  • ****Mozart's Note: Although this is a top ten list, I cannot say I played ten new games that I thought were awesome this year. Games 7-10, while games I played, should maybe be avoided unless you really think you have to play them.****

    If you find yourself legitimately disappointed by a wrestling game in the year 2012, then you haven't been paying attention. WWE 13 is an okay game, better than the last few years, but still kinda junk. From Sept-late Nov. I was on a bit of a wrestling kick and decided I wanted to play a new wrestling game. WWE 13 filled that need for a week and then the shine quickly wore off and I found myself constantly frustrated by half assed ideas and implementation that should be better by now. Yukes has been making these games since the original Smackdown! for the Playstation 1, you would think by now, with the combined knowledge of years of wrestling game development that Yukes would be hitting a home run every time, instead year after year, they get a walk after farting themselves into the ball's path. After all, what other wrestling game are you going to play? It's the only one on the damn market.

  • More Street Fighter is always cool, more Heihachi is always cool. I rented this from the redbox and played it for a few days. It's a fine fighting game, but I'd rather just keep playing Street Fighter 4 or Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

  • Rock Band Blitz is an odd creature, its full of things I should like, a spiritual successor to Harmonix's excellent Frequency and Amplitude, and a great way to squeeze more mileage out of the hundreds of dollars in Rock Band dlc I bought back when I had plastic instrument fever. Regrettably the gameplay never grabbed me, a no stakes score attack game where the objective is to simply get the best score you can on any given song. You can tap along to the beat and score points, or do nothing at all and the song will play itself out until the end. That last part had a lot to do with my "ehh" opinion of the game, nothing you do really matters, you can challenge friends on both xbox/ps3 and facebook to beat your high score but with no failure state it always felt more like a toy than something I had to master. Also minus 1 million bajillion points on the lack of assignable controls, this game would have been perfect for my absurdly expensive arcade replica controller with the really nice to tap buttons but a lack of customization meant it could never by used with such a thing in a way that plays well.

  • I was really looking forward to this game going cheap on Steam, it looked like fun and was full of dubstep to keep you going fast. Everything feels wrong though, the control and handling are just okay and the games biggest offense, a huge offense for any racing game, is an utter lack of a feeling of speed. It makes no difference if your speedometer says 200kmh or 20000000000kmh if everything around you slowly limps past. Telling me I'm going really fast doesn't mean a damn thing if it feels like I'm barely hitting a freeway cruising speed, in fact my daily commute to work feels faster than this racing game. Add to that gaming systems that seem to be at odds with each other, score points by blasting through barricades, lane dividers and anything else in your path, but not too much, or your car takes too much damage and explodes, what? Why?
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