GOTY 2012

This year has yet again been a pretty good year for gaming, a lot of big AAA titles but also even more great downloadable games. Unfortunately, due to being a poor student I didn't get round to playing most of those big games until later in the year (Christmas sales and what not) so I didn't play a lot of games this year and didn't even get round to finishing most of the ones I did play. But this list consists of the games I enjoyed playing the most, I missed a lot of games that I'm certain would place on this list had I played them, such as Mark of the Ninja, Far Cry 3, Forza Horizon or Borderlands 2.

Due to not playing so many games it wasn't too difficult to wittle them down to just 10, but there are 2 games that didnt make the cut I'd like to give mentions too:

Sine Mora, I enjoy bullet hell shooters, and this may not be quite "hell-ish" but its very fun with a interesting mechanic of losing time when you get hit, some massive screen filling bosses and a strange and dark story.

Realm of the Mad God, this is a free-to-play, bullet hell, rouge-like, MMO. Sounds pretty complex right, it's not. You choose a character class, you can only choose Wizard at first, but you eventually unlock different classes such as Warrior, Archer, Paladin, Necromancers and a bunch more. Each have their own stats and weapons. You can explore the open world, join other players, level your character upto Lvl 20, find and equip loot and then lose all yoru progress once you die, but its still an incredibly fun game, and can be played in a browser.

Anyway, onto my top 10 games of 2012.

List items

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  1. XCOM: Enemy Unknown

  I love strategy games, absolutely love them, Advance Wars and Fire Emblem are some of my top games. So a firaxis, console, turn based strategy game was exciting news for me. I have no relationship with previous XCOM games, and from what I've heard the original UFO Defense it pretty brutal. Enemy Unkown can get pretty brutal but its manageable, I adore the base building, the research and best of all, being able to name your soldier. Creating a connection between your soldiers, or naming them after your friends and then witnessing them die on the battlefield is tragic.

  There may not be much of a story to this game but the gameplay is fantastic, I've lost so many hours to it already, I didn't think a turn based strategy game would by my number 1 game of the year, or that a point and click adventure game with be my number 2, but they are, and XCOM truly is a great game that I know I'll continue playing well into the future.

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  2. The Walking Dead

  Before this game I have no interest in The Walking Dead TV show or comic, and I have no love for zombie games anymore. I only picked this up after everyone hyped it up so much so I thought I'd try it out. I'm not a big adventure game fan, I always get stuck on stupid puzzles, but this game...

  HOLY SHIT. I haven't even played it all yet but holy crap I had so emotional moments while playing this, even watching character I didn't like so much die, I still felt horrible.

  This game is truly amazing, the gameplay may not be much but its all about the story with this one.

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  3. Spelunky

  Spelunky is a fantastic arcade game, I played and enjoyed the original PC games, but I enjoyed the HD remake for XBLA. It is such as easy game to pick up and play for 10 minutes, which slowly turns to hours as you kid yourself by saying "just one more go...".

  Unlocking the tunnels was much harder in this than in the original, getting bombs and ropes could be hard enough, but getting a shotgun to the end of the Jungle was tough, I had to kill plenty a shopkeepers to get than gun and it wasn't easy to keep it. But then even harder, you have to bring a gold key from the Mines to the Temple to unlock the final shortcut, that was insane but I did it. I enjoyed that more than paying the tunnel maker because it gave you a fun and unique objective to do while playing the game.

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  4. Dishonored

  This game didn't look like much when I first saw it, but playing it is a completely different experience. It's like a mix between Bioshock and Assassins Creed. The atheistic style and background of Bioshock with the assassination and high flying gameplay of Assassins Creed.

  I really enjoyed the story and characters in this game and all the possibilities that you could attack each level.

  The games quite short but I think you definitely need to play through the game multiple times to see the true meaning of the story, the multiple endings don't come from who you kill, you kill bad guys and spare the good guys and still get the bad ending, it's all about how many people you kill, no matter their alignment. Depending on your chaos levels the characters react to you differently and even their fates will change depending on ho you deal with your targets.

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  5. Fez

  I have never had an experience in gaming quite like Fez. Never before have I had to write notes of secret languages and codes to uncover the hidden cubes in this game, or use a QR code to solve a puzzle.

  I played this game along side the Internet, as the Internet solved puzzles I followed with them, never have I seen that before in a game. Usually you can look online a few days after a games release and all the answers will be available, but not Fez, this game took the Internet several weeks to conquer.

  Oh and its a pretty decent platform game with sweet music as well.

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  6. Hitman: Absolution

  I thoroughly enjoyed Hitman Blood Money and have been anticipating this game since I stopped playing Blood Money. My first impressions of this game was that it looked fantastic, one of the best looking games I've played this year.

  Although I very quickly became aware this game may be too "linear" for me. The second level in this game, the Chinatwon one, has multiple ways for you to kill your target, the game even lists out all those ways, which takes away the fun of discovering solutions yourself away. Also out of all the ways you can kill this guy, I ended up leading him into the drug dealers apartment and shooting him in the head. I completed the level in 20 minutes and it was incredibly anti-climatic. This left a bad impression with me, luckily the next level picked it up some but I still feel like there not much freedom in this game which the previous games in the series had.

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  7. Assassin's Creed III

  I have been looking forward to this game since the day it was released. The Assassin Creed series got a bit dull and lackluster for me, it was always the same setting and get tiresome, when I saw the new environments in this game; forests, snow and boats, it looked like a breath of fresh air being pumped into the series.

  Although once I finally got my hands on this game, it took me about 6-7 hours before I barely got into the open world part of the game. The game play is still fun, running through trees and hunting animals is good fun and I haven't actually completed this game yet but hopefully it will get better.

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  8. Rock Band Blitz

  I never had a Rock Band or a Guitar Hero game, my friends did and that was enough for me, when we occasional got together we could get the full band experience. Another reason I never owned one of these games is space, I don't have the space in my room to have multiple plastic instruments.

  So when I heard of Blitz I got excited that I could play Rock Band on a controller, and it worked so well. Although I didn't have any Rock Band DLC of my own, I quickly bought as much as I could afford just to increase me library size. The Facebook integration was neat, having Score Wars between friends was a great laugh.

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  9. Hotline Miami

  Holy crap that music is amazing, I loved just standing still in a level just to listen to it.

  But when I played the game, I loved it just as much as the soundtrack. I like the hybrid of murder-simulator/puzzle game they created, you have to plan every attack before entering a room, one mis-step and its your ass on the line.

  I never got frustrated re-playing the same level multiple times because it was so fun killing rooms full of Mafia. Also there's so much more to the game, an interesting story, hidden masks and weapons in each level and a secret anding you can only get by picking up puzzle pieces in each level and re-arranging them into a secret password you have to enter into a computer on the final level!

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  10. Asura's Wrath

  I only rented this game because I knew it wasn't going to have much replay value, and I was right, I wouldn't want to pay full price for this, and some people suggested just watching it on YouTube. Thats because most of the game is just watching insane stuff go down, but its still fun to play and interact with the action.

  I found this game insane and outrageous in a good way that I can get behind. Although I never did pay to see the true ending.