melmer

GOTY

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If something is a "game" on Steam then it's in the running for GOTY of the Year and I forgot that FTL also came out, but I think FTL probably isn't in the running the way TFoL, NS2, and Dishonored are.

I've always thought "best of" things should be segmented at least into multiplayer and single player - that at least leaves Natural Selection 2 as my clear multiplayer winner.

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Because I haven't played Dishonered yet, I'd say my GOTY is Skyrim ... or was that released last year? Crap.. need to figure out what 2012 games I bought and played (damn backlog).

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I can't really comment since I haven't finished Walking Dead EP4 (and 5's not out obviously). As of this moment I would probably say XCOM.

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For me it's DayZ, I don't think any other game, with the possible exception of EVE, comes close to producing experiences as memorable as the ones I've had in that game. It's such a great game for sharing cool moments with other people.

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There's a disappointing lack of support for Fez in this thread, so I'll give that mention. Fez.

I'll probably remember Hotline Miami and Journey when the year has long been over. I've struggled to enjoy many mainstream releases this year, although I've still got a lot of games yet to play (Dishonored, Syndicate, Forza Horizion, Most Wanted and a few more).

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Just completed halo 4, it was pretty cool if you like exploding robot dogs with frickin laser beams attached to there foreheads.

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I can't think of any games I've played that came out this year. Mark of the Ninja, The Walking Dead, Dishonored, Need for Speed and that's it. Of those, I'd have to say TWD -- though it's not without its flaws.

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Last year I played only two 2011 games during 2011. This year my total has...increased?

  • The demo for Quantum Conundrum
  • The demo for The Walking Dead: Episode 1
  • The Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb DLC
  • Random Flash games everybody played (SpinSpin, CLOP, Transylvania Girls, etc.)

I guess I could play a 2012 game soon, but I'm too busy playing the original Fallout. GOTY 1997!

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Journey is actually one of my top titles of the year too. I just can't rightfully call it a game of the year when something like XCOM comes along. XCOM will likely be eating my time for years to come, where as I will probably only play through journey once more ever (for a grand total of 3 journies!)....

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I still haven't played Journey. I kept meaning to but now I feel like the only people left playing that will be lunatics.

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It's kind of fun even if you're playing with a lunatic. Even when it first came out there were people who already knew where all the secret scarf fragments were and would helpfully chirp you along.

Fez had some pretty amazing puzzles, but the pacing was really trying and it performed so sluggishly when it first launched that I didn't have the patience to finish it.

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I haven't played that many games this year (and only sampled some), but I'm pretty sure of my choices. Even considering Dishonored, Assassin's Creed The New One, and whatever that is still to come out or I've not played yet, The Walking Dead and FTL pretty much have no competition.

X-COM deserves a mention, but I think the game wasn't that well executed, actually -- Normal is way easy and Classic is way too brutal unless you switch into an extremely calculating mode of play, which slows the game down and makes the interface clunkiness even more apparent.

Journey was amazing, but it was such a brief experience that I wouldn't quite put it as game of the year material.

I have still some good games from last year to play (Arkham City, Assassin's Creed The Previous One, Skyrim is still unfinished, so is Dead Island, The Witcher 2 wants another go etc.) so maybe I'm finally old enough that I just can't find the free time any more to play all the great games I would like to. On one hand that is kind of sad but also has made me consider what I really want from games if I don't have infinite time/desire to play all of them.

And The Walking Dead and FTL, in quite different ways, are great examples of that. If I must be picky about what to play, I will choose games that try to do something different and interesting and not be all about violence. Something like Uncharted 3 or Far Cry 3 or Assassin's Creed 3, or even Dishonored are games I would surely enjoy, but they have now become secondary. I might even wait for the Christmas sale with Dishonored, though it's of course not guaranteed to go down in price so soon.

I'm currently most excited about The Witness, Gone Home and Machine for Pigs, and less so about any Triple A games. I've even mostly stopped following the gaming press* because I just want to care about a few games. So I expect next year in gaming will be similar to this one for me.

Then again I just played to completion L.A. Noire, which I thought was interesting, but not a very good game, so what do I know.

* still occasionally click a RPS link in Twitter, though

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I spent most of this year playing games I overlooked before, like Vanquish, Dark Souls, Renegade Ops, Mortal Kombat 9, and ALMOST Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise. I JUST played Walking Dead Episode 1 today and it's very very good.

Nobody's mentioned it yet, but I feel like FEZ does deserve a bit of praise.

GiantBomb mentioned that their goty of the year list might get rid of the "best downloadable" or "best indie" category and replace it with a "best triple-A" one because it's harder to come up with a full list of those.

EDIT- Yep, played 16 games this year, only 3 of em came out in 2012, I suck.

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2012 has been a bit of a lull for me. I don't care about Blops2 or Halo, and it seems like nothing else is coming out.

I've been playing mostly back catalog games, and small indie titles. Also Minecraft, hours and hours of Minecraft.

The only thing I've played with enough regularity that was actually released this year was Counter-Strike:Global Offensive.

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My game of the year is Botanicula. I think the word 'smitten' has been overused by the games press, but my vocabulary is struggling to come up with a word that better reflects my overall opinion of the game. The audio and visual design is incredible, with creativity flourishing from every pixel. It deals with themes of the preservation of nature, the harmony of the ecosystem and the (wait for it) power of friendship, but you don't have to acknowledge any of that to be taken in with the game's charm. Play it on GOG or Steam or whatever, but play it. It is one of the best adventure games of all time. Particularly because the puzzles aren't obtuse, and you won't be stuck combining your inventory with everything on the screen

Botanicula-16.jpg

Also worth mentioning:

  • FTL was really great, but it so emotionally taxing I can't bear to play it for a while.
  • Dishonored had some stunning world design, as well as an amazing sense of traversal and progression. Pity the story itself was trash.
  • The Walking Dead was something really special. I just wish more people were willing to go the "interactive fiction" (not sure of how to classify it properly) route and apply it to things that aren't zombies or whatever David Cage comes up with. I would love these systems set in a non fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural game. That said, I think about the story and characters about this game a lot, so that says something about the game's merit. I found it so impressive that the sense of 'bleakness' doesn't completely overwhelm the player, and that each character's motivations were apparent without being screamed in your face.
  • Hotline Miami was great because I like weird movies and that game was weird as shit.

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My game of the year is Botanicula. I think the word 'smitten' has been overused by the games press, but my vocabulary is struggling to come up with a word that better reflects my overall opinion of the game. The audio and visual design is incredible, with creativity flourishing from every pixel. It deals with themes of the preservation of nature, the harmony of the ecosystem and the (wait for it) power of friendship, but you don't have to acknowledge any of that to be taken in with the game's charm. Play it on GOG or Steam or whatever, but play it. It is one of the best adventure games of all time. Particularly because the puzzles aren't obtuse, and you won't be stuck combining your inventory with everything on the screen

Convinced and bought.

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My game of the year has been "teaching". I keep on buying games and intending to play them, but those damn classes (about teaching students) and students (to be taught!) keep getting in my way. Over the summer, I played Uncharted 3, InFamous 2, and about half of Darksiders 2, only the latter of which is from 2012. The rest of the year has been spent more or less in a school-coma. Oh! I finished Assassin's Creed Revelations last week, which I started in March! There's also about 3/4 of Mass Effect 3. Man, I really need to try to play some shit over the winter break. I want to get into Walking Dead and Xcom so fucking bad, but no luck. I'd have to say my game of 2012 is a tie between Darksiders 2 and Mass Effect 3, not because either is particularly awesome (haven't finished either, no idea), but because they're pretty much the only games from the year that I've touched for more than a couple of hours.

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Convinced and bought.

That's really awesome, but I should have added that your heart has to be open to joy to really click with this game. Please let me know what you think of it!

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There were a lot of well-regarded games that I won't manage to play before the end of the year, but of what I have played, three games stand out:

Journey was such a unique experience with great visual aesthetics, music, and a really novel approach to multiplayer. I went into the game blind, just based on my affection for the studio's past work, and wasn't even 100% certain that it was a multiplayer game until the reveal at the end. Also, the way that the (admittedly simple) gameplay mechanics are discovered purely through play, and not through any sort of tutorial, really increased the sense of immersion into the game universe.

XCOM was a game that I would have enjoyed even if the execution was extremely flawed, since I'm such a huge fan of the genre and since the genre has seen so few entries in recent years, especially on the scale of this. Prior to PAX East, I was expecting a half-hearted effort, and would have been happy to have it. After seeing Firaxis' booth demo and sitting in on their panel at Pax East, I was sold on the development team's vision, and was much more enthusiastic about the game. The execution was still a question mark, but once I got my hands on the actual game, I was blown away. I have been waiting over a decade for a turn-based squad tactics game to pick up where Jagged Alliance 2 left off, and I finally have it. I hope to god the game has sold well, because I would love to see this genre come back. Even if it doesn't, though, I've got an awesome game I'll be playing for years.

It feels kind of awkward heaping a bunch of praise on the The Walking Dead on Idle Thumbs, because it's in very large part Jake and Sean's game, but god damn, I don't know that I've ever had this level of narrative buy-in in any work of fiction. Games have an inherent advantage over literature and film in that the player has agency over the actions of the protagonist, but I can't think of any other game I've played that has leveraged that fact as well in service of the narrative. Which is remarkable, because as gut-wrenching and immediate as the decisions you're faced with are, their impact on the over-arching narrative seems largely illusory. But it works, completely. Hats off to those guys. On top of that, I've started reading the Kirkman comics since playing the game (never seen the show), and the degree to which the universe feels of a part across both mediums in incredible. That's quite an accomplishment in and of itself.

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