Something went wrong. Try again later

asky314159

This user has not updated recently.

79 5075 23 8
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

GOTY 2012

Well well, another year of video gaming behind us. Some high profile misses this year, but a number of nice surprises, too. First, a word about a few games that did not make this list:

Halo 4

Pretty disappointing compared to previous Halo games. Spartan Ops is pretty uninteresting; it would work better if the gameplay was more imaginative and the number of enemies scaled a little bit to the number of people playing. The UI is nowhere near as responsive and intuitive as Reach's. The two-tier unlock system is kind of silly. They really missed a lot of potential in the campaign by reverting to status quo after a couple of missions. Team slayer has been completely ruined by the changes they made to multiplayer. Every single game is a blowout one way or the other, based on which team can start chaining together ordinance drops first. Not fun. However, I did enjoy playing through the campaign, and some of the other mutltiplayer modes aren't quite as broken. I had a decent time with Halo 4, but considering how much I liked Halo 3 and Reach, kind of disappointing that it doesn't even make this list.

The Walking Dead

I tried to play this game when I got the first two episodes for free through Playstation Plus. I wanted to like what they were doing but I only ended up making it through about the first half of the first episode. The thing that really killed it for me was how contrived a lot of things seemed. Instead of being drawn in by the narrative, every time the game presents you with a particularly bad scenario, all I could picture is some game designer sitting next to me going "Ooohhh, doesn't this really suck?! Are you noticing how bad this all is?!" I never could buy into the world because of course that didn't go well, the people who made this game had decreed it be so. Which is kind of weird, because I actually really liked it when Dragon Age II pulled the same kind of stunt. This probably isn't the game's fault, I'm probably just a crazy person.

Mass Effect 3

By far the biggest disappointment this year. It just was not as good as the previous two in almost every way.The quarian mission was just about the only bright spot in the game, and even that had a stupid, stupid boss fight at the end. The way Shepard goes around wrapping up every major plot thread is way too convenient to be believable. The banshee is not fun to fight. There aren't really any new meaningful character moments. The attempts to "humanize Shepard are terrible (and completely contradict who my Shepard has become over these three games). And that ending... Let me make one thing clear, non-standard endings are completely fine, if you earn them. Mass Effect 3 does not earn its ending.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.
The this I really hated about the ending was how in all three endings, you DESTROY GALACTIC CIVILIZATION. I mean, seriously. No matter what, the mass effect relays are all destroyed. Just think about the implications of that. There's going to be widespread starvation as everyone's supply lines are cut. (Noveria certainly can't feed itself, for instance) All those ships in orbit around Earth, what are they going to do to feed themselves? Anyone bring supplies for colony-building with them on this mission? Are there even any planets in range of Earth for the turians to live on? The krogan will probably just start killing everyone once supplies get short, anyway. Thanks for playing Mass Effect! Everyone dies!

List items

  • I know, I know, a PS2 remake for Game of the Year? Seriously, Persona 4 was a really great game on the PS2, and this version is no less great. Plus, every time I come across a little UI problem that's been sanded off (choosing skills during persona fusion?), the warm light of joy is reignited in my heart just a little bit.

    Don't judge me.

  • The Forza physics and the big open world go really great together. I've spent a lot of hours just aimlessly cruising around the work in my 1992 Bugatti Super Sport, having a blast. Plus, "Bass Arena" is pretty much the best radio station ever.

  • I didn't know anything about this game before I saw the quick look, but I'm glad I found out about it. The controls are really responsive and it was a lot of fun to figure out the perfect way through each encounter.

  • Well written, well acted, the driving was great, the hand-to-hand combat was great. This was another game I didn't know anything about before I saw the quick look. Thanks, Giant Bomb!

  • A lot of people (including one Jeff Gerstmann) had a problem with some of the characters in this game. Not me. I loved (nearly) every line in the game. The core gameplay loop is just as good as the first game (if not better) and the classes were all fun to play.

  • Having never played many fighting games before, I never got very good at this (I still can't reliably pull off quarter-circles). However, it was not too hard to get good enough to reliably beat the normal-difficulty AI. I enjoyed the story a lot and had fun all the way through.

  • It didn't have nearly the staying power of Diablo II and the game launched with a lot of (pretty serious) issues, but the core of the combat is solid and satisfying and I'm really looking forward to the expansion(s).

  • The combat was not particularly interesting and I really didn't like the difficulty spike on the final boss, but all the rest of it was completely amazing. The QTEs had a lot of good impact and the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing was entertaining the whole way through.

  • Wubba dubba dubba, that true? Yeah!

  • This game was a pretty big disappointment, and came very close to missing this list. The main story missions are not done well, for the most part. The chases and forced stealth missions were universally awful, and Connor is a supremely unlikable character. It's a testament to how fun the free-running and face-stabbing remain and how decent the naval stuff and the multiplayer Wolfpack mode are that I still had an overall positive experience with this game.
Load Comments