by aggrocraig
Here's the list of my top 10 games of 2012! There's tons of honorable mentions to be had, but I'll get to those.
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
Very straightforwardly, Spelunky is one of the best-playing games I have played in years. It is pure 2D platforming excellence, expertly tuned and maddeningly challenging. The presentation is top-notch, with charming character sprites, vibrant colors all over the place, and one of my favorite soundtracks of the year. I still haven't gotten the secret final stage, but I've come extremely close and the feeling that experience engendered in me is one I've not had in a long time. It's rare, in an age where games are meant more to be thrill rides that one simply experiences from start to finish, to feel proud about beating a video game. However, I am immensely proud of the fact that I've even beaten the last boss of Spelunky. And also proud of having all of the shortcuts open. On top of that, the deathmatch multiplayer is chaotic fun, even if it devolves into a mess of bomb-throwing before too long, and the "co-op" tests the limits of any friendship. It's almost weird to give this award to Spelunky knowing that it's been available for free for some time, but the XBLA version is its own game, released this year, and is easily my favorite game I played in 2012.
Where my favorite game of 2012 excelled in pure gameplay, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward grabbed me with its story and never let go. With mysteries on top of mysteries to be unraveled, a cast of fantastic characters to meet and learn about, and thought-provoking puzzles to be solved, all 35 hours I spent to see the true ending of VLR were worth it. The team made a host of improvements over the game's predecessor, 999, streamlining the process of finding and exploring the various different story paths that lead to the many, many endings, and also improving the puzzle designs to be less frustrating and more logical. Really, though, the gameplay just needed to avoid being an obstacle, as the story alone was enough to keep me going. Twist after mind-bending twist gripped me all the way through, and even a couple weird bugs that cost me a few hours of progress couldn't stop my insatiable need to see what was going to happen next, to find out what it all meant. And boy, let me tell you, nothing could have prepared me for the revelations VLR had in store. Please, go out and buy this game so that they have a reason to make another. There's still more left to be told and it'd be a damn shame if we missed out.
I feel like I should start this by saying that I'm not a strategy game kind of guy. Be it turn-based or real-time, I tend to be terrible at this sort of game. However, that didn't stop me from getting into XCOM. Sure, I played on Easy, which helped along the accessibility a bit, but the game does a great job of making sure you understand the systems in place (and there are many) and are prepared to use them to defend Earth against the invading aliens. The incredible amount of depth available to be explored, from base building, research, and engineering to outfit and develop your troops in the metagame, to managing the plate-spinning nature of keeping various nations invested in the XCOM project, to the actual strategic gameplay of the squad battles, is simply out of this world. Some games make you care about characters through storytelling and interactions, but XCOM got me to care about my various squad members with barely a word out of any of them. As I followed these dudes and ladies through their various missions, I did all I could to keep them alive because they were the ones I could trust to get the job done. My attachment to my squad is a big part of why this game sits right here on the list.
As someone who didn't care much for Far Cry or Far Cry 2, I will admit that I was very surprised by Far Cry 3. It might make some pretty unfortunate missteps with its story as it progresses, leaving behind some of its better characters in favor of less interesting ones, but the game more than makes up for any such shortcomings with pure gameplay. This game is kinda like the weird cousin of Saints Row: The Third, having a really great open world with tons of cool stuff to do in it, so much so that the story missions don't really need to carry too much weight to keep the game going. However, where Saints Row: The Third had fantastic, varied story missions with a whole ensemble cast of lovable characters, Far Cry 3 falls victim to some monotony in mission design. While the high points are very high, there are a lot of missions that feel a bit like more of the same as the others. Still, I had enough fun hunting animals, climbing radio towers, and messing up fools with a bow and arrow to secure Far Cry 3 high praise among games of 2012.
It's difficult to talk about Dust without at least acknowledging the story behind its creation. The vast majority of the work on this game was done by one man, Dean Dodrill, with just a bit of help with music and a bit of other stuff here and there from some other folks. Still, it's astounding that a game so mechanically complex and with such gorgeous presentation could come from one person. However, even without that context, Dust: An Elysian Tail stands as an extremely impressive game. In designing this game, it's clear that the framework of a downloadable game certainly didn't hold anything back on the design end. The game is chock-full of fleshed-out systems, from collecting materials and crafting gear to wear, stat-based character progression and leveling, and a combo-based combat system, all of which contribute to a whole that is even more satisfying than the sum of those impressive parts. What's more, the game also plays host to one of the more powerful stories told in a game this year, a harrowing look into genocide and attempting to find atonement for acts for which there is none. The bright, colorful art style and anthropomorphic animal characters may make the game look lighthearted, but there are no punches pulled by the story. It's striking, emotional, and bold. Solid gameplay, hard-hitting storytelling, and downright beautiful presentation all come together to make Dust a wonderful experience from beginning to end.
Along with previously-mentioned games like Spelunky and Dust, as well as several others that didn't quite make this list, Mark of the Ninja stands as part of a wave of "downloadable games" from this year that are taking great strides to make that term feel completely meaningless. In years past, the label of "downloadable game" carried with it some lowered expectations, as some sacrifices were inevitably made in order to fit the kind of scope that developers of such games aimed for. However, that distinction has been all but eradicated with games like Mark of the Ninja. This game stands tall in a genre that is famously marked by clunky, frustrating gameplay as a beacon of what it looks like to do stealth right. The 2D perspective helps a great deal by removing a whole set of the variables that can lead to the player getting discovered by some guard because a heel or coattail was sticking out of a safe spot, but the developers go far beyond that to make sure that the player is equipped with any information that might be useful to properly exploit a situation. Vision cones, noise ripples, and a host of other information is available for use, and when all of that knowledge is brought to bear properly to make it through an entire stage, completing every objective and collecting every scroll and artifact along the way, the satisfaction is hard to beat. Add to this a character customization system that adjusts to the way you play and rewards any style with cool unlocks, and there's a ton of replayability to be had here as well. Klei Entertainment managed something really special with Mark of the Ninja, and I normally really don't like stealth games.
This is going to be my first of a couple of "fuck the haters" choices on this list. I don't care about the crowds of naysayers who insist that this game is without value because of some misguided comparison to a rose-tinted memory of Diablo II, there is still a ton of engrossing fun to be had with Diablo III, and I was all too happy to go along on that ride. I care enough about the lore of the series to be really excited by the early Tyrael reveal, and though the story was pretty predictable from there on, the locations that the game brought me to were stunning (especially in the later acts) and I was always finding new skill combinations that were fun and effective. I'll admit to not finding Inferno difficulty any fun at all, but that's because it makes there be a "right" way to play a class, which goes directly against what I'm looking for. The absence of PvP might have bothered some group of players, but I certainly didn't miss it. Finally, major points for Whimsyshire. That alone is worth a round of applause.
This game's announcement felt like the combination of the things I love most about games all into one product, so my anticipation was burning white-hot at P4A's release. Persona 4 is one of my favorite games that I've played in the past decade without question, and Arc System Works made my favorite fighting series in history, Guilty Gear. Even considering my high hopes for this game, the combination of interesting continuation of the Persona 4 storyline and the kind of flashy but still intricate fighting gameplay that is Arc's trademark made for a fantastic experience throughout. The cast of Persona was well-adapted to fighting game characters, with interesting and varied movesets which made the cast feel vibrant and fun to play. I'm never going to be as good at this game as I'd like, but I have definitely had a ton of fun with the fighting side and am left extremely curious about what's coming next on the story side.
I was a fan of the first two Max Payne games, playing them to completion and enjoying the shooting mechanics and the comic book noir storytelling. However, when the series moved from Remedy to Rockstar, I went into the third installment expecting some things to have been changed. Given what I've heard about other people's reactions to Max Payne 3, I think that those expectations left me more prepared than most for what this game is. The dark, biting wit to the writing of Max's character remains intact and he's acted and animated better than ever, giving the story told in the game much-needed life. The writers and actors for the other characters do great work as well, making Max's charges, the worst kind of rich-kid trash imaginable, very believable. Characters like this felt like an odd disconnect in Far Cry 3, but the way that they bounce off of Max's character makes for an entertaining interplay that works surprisingly well. The turns the story takes are weighty and the action is intense, making Max Payne 3 a great experience on its own, even if you can't quite play it like the other two games in the series and hope to survive.
I have to admit: if Spec Ops: The Line was a better-playing game, I'm reasonably certain it would be on the other end of this list. It's really unfortunate that the third-person shooting gameplay in this game is mediocre at best, something that is suffered through in order to see what the story has to offer. However, the fact remains that the story that the writers behind Spec Ops have to tell is one of the finest and most daring video game stories that I have ever experienced. In a world littered with "hoo-ah" war video games, seeing a game make an effort at a story that addresses the horrors of combat and the effects such things can have on otherwise good people is refreshing, even though that's a word that I'd hesitate to use when referring to anything that happens in the game at all. Some genuinely terrible events unfold over the story's course, and more often than not the player is implicated in them rather than simply being an observer. Playing Spec Ops: The Line made me feel genuinely bad about things that I was doing, and Nolan North's performance as Captain Walker backs up the bold writing with strong voice-acting that changes as the experience wears on, showing the deterioration of a man under insane duress. The revelations that the game hides behind the somewhat shoddy gameplay shouldn't be missed, even if that means playing though the game on Easy just to be able to see it. Spec Ops: The Line will not be remembered as a shooter, but I hope beyond hope that other developers take some lessons in video game narrative from it and apply them to games in the future. The industry will be better for it.
