• 29Dec 12

  My Top 10 Games of 2012

  2012 Has been a fantastic year for games, offering a diverse selection of quality retail and downloadable titles.

  1) Journey

  Pros:

  • Compellingly beautiful.

  • Haunting soundtrack that dynamically blends with the gameplay.

  • Whimsically fun to play.

  • Adds by taking away. Minimalism at its finest.

  • Innovative, seamless and endearing multiplayer component.

  • Emotionally resonant.

  2) Persona 4 Golden

  Pros:

  • Phenomenal characters and dialogue.

  • An intimately grounded setting.

  • Compelling story that expertly combines the mundane with the absurd.

  • Oozes style and charm.

  • The best menus I've ever interacted with.

  • Turn-based combat at its finest.

  • A unique combination of genres.

  • Organically gives weight to moment-to-moment decision making.

  • Catchy soundtrack.

  Cons:

  • Repetitive.

  3) Xenoblade Chronicles

  Pros:

  • Incredibly ambitious in both concept and scale.

  • Smartly integrates western conventions into a JRPG framework.

  • Thoroughly innovates the genre.

  • A beautiful and dynamic world that is rewarding to explore.

  • Combat that encourages synergy and positional play.

  • Memorable characters who both play and act distinctively.

  • Wonderful soundtrack.

  • Massive amount of content.

  Cons:

  • Weak final stretch.

  • Cliched story.

  • Poor friendly AI.

  • Some optional content requires too much grinding to access.

  • Often too difficult to find who/what you're looking for.

  4) Mass Effect 3

  Pros:

  • Many powerful scenes.

  • Satisfyingly resolves a number of important conflicts.

  • Maintains a fantastic cast of characters.

  • Further refines the shooting over its predecessors.

  • Enough cameos to satiate any fan.

  • Surprisingly fun multiplayer.

  Cons:

  • Unsatisfying conclusion.

  • Some shoehorned plot points.

  • Uninteresting and nonsensical optional fetch quests.

  • Shooting sequences occasionally drag.

  • Poorly implemented journal.

  5) The Walking Dead

  Pros:

  • Emotionally devastating.

  • Makes choices feel meaningful.

  • Quality writing and characters.

  • Compelling moral dilemmas.

  • Incredibly Engrossing.

  • Interesting visual aesthetic.

  Cons:

  • Buggy.

  • Mechanically not fun to play.

  • Poor action sequences.

  6) Guild Wars 2

  Pros:

  • Fairly ditches the subscription model.

  • Thoroughly innovative.

  • Refreshingly paced.

  • Encourages teamwork and actively eliminates griefing.

  • Intelligently streamlines many systems.

  • Encourages exploration in many different ways.

  • Incentivizes player to just do what they feel like doing.

  • Conveys a handcrafted vibe.

  Cons:

  • Combat has an overall lack of impact and visual indicators.

  • Sparse on endgame content.

  7) FTL

  Pros:

  • Simple yet engaging micromanagement.

  • Random elements make for commonly story-worthy experiences.

  • Charmingly simple, yet conducive presentation.

  • Makes losing fun.

  • Incredible soundtrack.

  Cons:

  • Events become somewhat predictable over time.

  • Final boss is dramatically more difficult than any previous encounters, in particular requiring too much foreknowledge.

  8) Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

  Pros:

  • Intriguing and interconnected mystery.

  • Memorable and well-acted characters.

  • Zero Jr. is a fantastic antagonist.

  • Mechanically improves upon its predecessor (9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors) in important ways.

  Cons:

  • Ending is too ambitious for its own good.

  • Puzzles can be tedious.

  • Less interesting than its predecessor.

  9) Far Cry 3

  Pros:

  • Entertaining and living open world.

  • Fantastic animations make moving around a joy.

  • Technically beautiful.

  • Vaas is a compelling villain.

  • Impressively varied gameplay.

  Cons:

  • Story is wasted potential.

  10) XCOM: Enemy Unknown

  Pros:

  • Successfully modernizes a genre.

  • Battles and base-building are both well executed.

  • Combat is tense.

  Cons:

  • Buggy.

  • Posted Dec 29, 2012 1:22 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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