by jimi
Honorable mentions:
Frog Fractions - Just play it, if you aren't sold by the time you get the warp drive you have no sense of humor. Best political simulator of 2012.
Hotline Miami - Drug induced mass murder!
Halo 4 - It's more Halo, I enjoyed it but ehhhhh
BLUNDER OF THE YEAR:
Assassins Creed 3 - Fuck man. Fuck. Boring protagonist, boring environments and worst ending of the year. How could they fuck it up that hard.
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
The first video game to provoke tears from me. The story told in The Walking Dead is phenominal, it is not fantastical(apart from you know, zombies) or overblown, it is just the story of how these normal people survive and cope with the end of the world. The gameplay is standard adventure fare but that's not the reason to play this. Any developers looking for how to handle story and choice driven games needs to pay attention to this game.
This would have been #1 if it wasn't for my initial poor experience with the game. It needs to be stressed that with the DLC this is a totally different experience. It is despicable that the DLC is so crucial to the main game. My second run through with the DLC installed was fantastic though. In other words fuck EA for monetizing and rushing an otherwise fantastic game.
The best gameplay in a game this year. The great turn based strategy combined with a complex metagame made this a very enjoyable, yet stressful experience. The game doesn't really have a story, however the missions seem to make there own stories. Such as the Guile of the team solo taking out 9 aliens in a last stand. Or Francis York Morgan successfully hitting the game ending 30% chance sniper shot.
Yes the game is mostly quick time events, yes you once again need the DLC to complete the experience but Asura's Wrath was the most dumb fun I have had with a game this year. It is very self aware with the QTE's later on and has some awe inspiring set pieces.
I was not expecting to enjoy Sleeping Dogs as much as I did. It is, after all, the spiritual successor to True Crime, however it presented a very cool open world, a likeable main character and a surprisingly interesting story. Plus the gameplay felt like you were reenacting a John Wu flick, which was a bonus.
I want to put this further up the list, but I just can't bring myself to. The actual game part of Catherine gets old quickly and just gets in the way of the plot. The bar scenes and story progression however are top notch. If it wasn't for the puzzles it would be rated much higher. It should be noted that this was released in 2012 in the EU, thus it makes the list.
I don't really know how to feel about Journey. I get the feeling it is going to be a lot of people's GOTY and for the most part I agree with them. It is very interesting, however the whole thing is around 2 hours long and it's not so much a game as it is an experience. I really enjoyed it but as a game I can't really rate it much higher.
I'll be honest, I haven't completed this yet. However I am about 15 hours into it and I still have a ton left to do. They took the premise of 999 and improved almost everything about the execution. I regret that I have not completed it before I made this list as I want to rate it higher, however there is the possibility they completely tank the ending.
The definitive version of Persona 4, one of my favourite games, on the go. Brilliant. Imported.
I felt more like a master assassin playing this than a certain other assassin based game this year. A very fun game with a very cool world, it seems like the natural evolution of the Thief games. My only complaint is the way the endings are handled, you are explicitly told that if you kill too many people you get the bad ending, however they give you loads of combat tools that you simply cannot use if you want the good ending making them pointless.