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galacticdonut

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Best of 2012

I played a lot more games this year than I thought. Makes sense considering all the free time I had in the first half of the year, but still!

Honourable Mentions:

Didn't play enough of these to put them on my list:

The Last Story - Seemingly cool RPG with an interesting combat system, shame I have no urge to turn on my Wii

Dishonored - Really awesome atmosphere and powers and a stealth system I don't suck at. Put it down as Borderlands 2 came out and never really picked it back up again

Far Cry 3 - Played for about 20 minutes, need to play more

Zero Escape - Virtue's Last Reward - I plowed through 999 nonstop and loved the hell out of it, the puzzles were neat and the story was surprisingly good, especially fitting the gameplay of multuple endings into the actual story. From all accounts VLR is even better, but it only showed up yesterday...

For other reasons:

Assassin's Creed III - Man this game had such a good opening and a great twist, but then it just kinda falls flat the further into the game you go. Connor's story isn't too bad (and the final scene with Charles Lee is fantastic) but the Desmond stuff wrapped up in such a bleh way it really put it off. Shame.

FTL - Awesome game, only cut it due to space

Darksiders II - A little similar to AC III really. Amazing music (it's Jesper Kyd), a really neat opening world and improved mechanics...but it lost itself in the story.

FIFA Soccer 13 - They streamlined clubs a bit more which is always nice, and the passing/first touch does seem a lot more natural. Still capable of the most rage-inducing physics but I think it always will be.

Pokémon Black/White Version 2 - Improvements over the last ones that no-one except me cares about (Breeding, passing down natures easier, EV training)

SSX - Neat to waste away my lunchbreaks, but lacking any real depth to it.

Games I played loads that didn't come out this year:

Saints Row: The Third, 999, Rayman Origins, Alice: Madness Returns, Catherine, Uncharted 3, Grandia II

List items

  • Yeah, I put this at number 1. Every year prior I haven't been able to due to dumb things like 'EU release dates', 'It being a remake' or 'Hahaha you want a localised Tales game? NO' so...yeah!

    It's Tales. I love Tales. Plus Graces F does have the most strategic combat system of the bunch of them so far, which made it really fun to play. The story was decent and there were enough good character interactions and the usual Tales stuff to keep me interested.

    I put 140-something hours into it, platinumed it and even bought it for a second time when the EU version showed up. Look out of Tales of Xillia being GotY for 2013...

  • Addictive. Really addictive. Also knowing that I'm better at this game than everyone currently on my friend's list makes me feel pretty damn great.

  • As one of the last people in the world to care about Borderlands' story, I loved the story in 2 (and the fact that there actually was one). Also punching Handsome Jack in the balls during the final fight was the most SATISFYING THING EVER.

    Some of the humour was hit or miss, but all-in-all it's a bigger, more polished Borderlands and that's all that I wanted.

  • Every so often I get the urge just to race around and until we get the next proper Burnout game (i.e. never) I decided to pick up Forza Horizon.

    Gorgeous-looking game, inoffensive soundtrack and enough of an arcadey feel for me not to have to worry about gear ratios and crazy car things like that. One of the few games I kept playing and playing til I 100%-ed it.

  • The end wasn't nearly as bad as some people made out (and I played it before the Extended cut came out) but it soured it just enough to drop this down from much higher on the list.

    Still, it had some amazing moments (Garrus at the top of the Citadel, Tali getting wasted and Mordin in the elevator) that were extremely enjoyable. Shame it didn't live up to my stupidly-high expectations, but I don't think it ever was going to.

  • This game a) Made me play a turn-based strategy game, b) Made me KEEP playing a turn-based strategy game and c) Actually care about my squad members through something really small such as being able to rename and nickname them. RIP 'Gangwonder', you took that explosion to the face like a champ.

  • Having played none of the past Hitman games at all is probably why I liked this a lot more than most people. It had just enough of the 'sandbox' missions to keep me interested in the variety and the story wasn't bad. Plus some of the villains were neat characters that really did make you want to garotte the hell out of them.

    Popping up the scores of your friends at the start of each level was a nice touch too.

  • This game is mental and reminded me of when I used to religiously download my weekly episodes of subbed anime and just sit and watch the madness. The story was engaging, the characters interesting and I thought the whole fusion of this neo-future-buddhism-robot concept was genuinely cool. Shame the True ending is DLC, but it's on youtube.

    Also the soundtrack is AMAZING.

  • Another victim of 'Story-starts-out-good-but-kinda-peters-out' syndrome, but Reckoning had really great combat that kept me playing. It was like a good, single-player version of WoW and had some genuinely cool sidequests and missions. The main fault was that everything seemed really front-loaded, with loads of quests in the first zone which took forever to finish.

    I played about 40 hours of that game and still kept coming back to finish it, so it must've done something right.

  • I think the greatest thing about Hotline Miami is just the vibe you get whilst playing it. The soundtrack, aesthetic and hazy story beats all add to the feeling you get even seperately from the frantic in-and-out gameplay of retrying every level to be able to beat it without being killed.

    While the story and gameplay fell a little short of my expectations, the all-round package (and another AMAZING soundtrack) were well worth experiencing.
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