You know the drill. I played a bunch of games this year, and now I'm going to write up my emotions about them in an ordered, numbered list. Enjoy!
The Backlog of Shame, or Games I wish I'd gotten to this year, but didn't because I was playing TF2: Max Payne 3, XCOM, Far Cry 3, Dishonored, Spec Ops, Asura's Wrath
I don't know what took me so long, but I played through all of Borderlands this year. Not just the sequel, but the original game as well. When the first one came out, I was uninterested for whatever reason, and I came back to it on a whim, and the hooks were firmly implanted in me. I burned through the entire original game and then jumped right into the second and burned through that one. Then I started a Mechromancer and beat it again. Then I started New Game + with her and finally I was done. Hours and hours of colorful guns, colorful characters, awful mondern lingo, and did I mention the guns? It was heaven. No game had that effect on me this year like Borderlands 2 did, and that's why it's my Game of the Year.
I'll admit it, I bought this game because I wanted to see more Big Bo moments. I was ready to laugh my way through a ridiculous story much like my play-through of Rogue Warrior. Instead, I found an engaging and complex narrative, the type of which you don't see anywhere in gaming nowadays. I laughed and I cried with my squad mates as I took on robot enemies who broke apart in fascinating ways. I battled gigantic bosses with only a rocket launcher and my roll maneuver. And in the end, I put down my controller and yelled "That was SWEEET".
Syndicate really shouldn't have been as good as it was. Its a shooter remake of a strategy franchise that has only diehard fans to its name. Its also a shooter in a year where shooters are being pushed back against by gamers. And maybe that's why nobody bought this game. They sure missed a hell of a thrill ride though. Any shooter where you can hack a guys brain and make him blow himself to kingdom come is AAA material in my book, and its unique universe and weaponry carried me through a serviceable campaign. All that and a decent song from the lord of dubstep, and you have my attention.
Man, what could have been. I was rooting for 38 Studios as soon as Amalur came onto my radar, and I gladly paid full price on Day 1. The combat never got old, the creature designs were fantastic, and the world felt big but manageable. Sure, the story stuff was mostly fantasy garbage, but it was inoffensive enough, and the protagonist being without destiny was interesting in a genre where every other protagonist is the chosen one. I never finished the game, but I pumped a solid 80 hours into it, and would gladly jump right back in today. It was a decent first outing, and it's a shame we'll never see what they could have done with the next one.
Yes, I know TF2 was released in 2007. But this year, the hat makers over at Valve released Mann vs Machine, an entirely new game mode that is basically horde mode with robots. But it's horde mode in TF2, so it instantly jumps head and shoulders above all other horde modes. Look, I played A LOT of TF2 this year. It's still being upgraded every few weeks, and it's still my go to place for multiplayer shooter mayhem, so it's on my list.
I didn't play a lot of Sleeping Dogs this year, other games and schoolwork got in the way and I never got back to it. But what I did play was great open world action combined with a serious storyline that doesn't go all the way down the rabbit hole that GTA4 did. There is enough comic relief that when the story does try something dramatic, you feel excitement instead of abject boredom. The mere fact that I wanted to play this game at all considering that my love of open world crime games begins and ends with Saints Row speaks volumes towards its quality.
The first Tekken Tag game has always been my favorite entry in the long running King of the Iron Fist series. It had tons of characters, storylines were thrown out the window, and it had the foundation of Tekken 3 to build upon. Tag 2 doesn't have quite as good a foundation, but it has an even greater number of fighters in its roster and all the features you could expect out of a modern fighting game, without all the parts of Tekken that makes me shake my head. All fighting games should strive to fill up their rosters with raptors, butlers, robot girls, luchadors, and whatever Mokujin is supposed to be, but until ridiculousness becomes the law of the land, I'll be playing this.
343 hit it out of the park with their first true Halo outing, an entertaining campaign which balances game play from all games in the series into something that pleases mostly everyone. Then again, that effort to please everyone might have driven me away from the game after the campaign was wrapped up. The multiplayer is fine, but it is different enough that it doesn't scratch the same itch that Halo 1 did in its prime, and Reach still does to this day. When I can sprint everywhere on the map and get as many kills whacking guys in the gut as I do with headshots, its just not the same game anymore. Now I know how all those Quake guys must have felt in 2001.
Pinball Arcade is the only game I have on my phone, and for good reason. While others fling birds and draw something, I'm reliving the golden ages of the arcade with great physics and perfect emulation. I'm more than happy to pick up any new table they throw at me, jumping at the chance to experience my old favorites, or learn a table I never got a chance to play before. Either way, it's a feast for arcade lovers worldwide.
This is a tough game to put on my list just because I feel like I never want to touch anything Mass Effect related again. That ending was killer, but we all know that. Thinking past the controversy, most of Mass Effect 3 was a worthy finale to the trilogy, and I especially enjoyed the parts they put in for the Tali relationship, they were really powerful. If it wasn't for the awful ending and all the attempts to fix it through DLC, it would definitely be higher up.
