GOTY

[Twig]

Or for you Dota 2 players. I know it says it's a "deny" voice clip, and it may well play during a denial, but I swear I hear him say it when he kills people too - particularly with Culling Blade - and it's hilarious to me every time.

He says it when killing people. Axe is one of the best voices.

I say that, but I really do like most of the lords' lines quite a bit.

[TheLastBaron]

The line is so out of character for him though, considering normally he talks like an idiot and in the third person.

[Twig]

He talks like an idiot? In the third person, sure, but I wouldn't call it idiot-speak. He clearly knows words and is at least marginally not-stupid. The third-person angle is just a weird mannerism they gave him for whatever reason.

[TheLastBaron]

Well I always thought of him like the Hulk, or like a caveman, though I guess a lot of that was just the third person thing and after watching that he seems less dumb that I thought he did. I still find the line very out of character for him though, but it doesn't really bother me.

[Twig]

It sits pretty well with the rest, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe it's just weird to you 'cause Axe looks and sounds nothing like Gene Wilder? I DUNNO.

[sclpls]

For me it is XCOM by a long shot. Combat is always so satisfyingly tense, and I love the pressure the game puts on you to move things along before global panic gets out of hand. The last level is a bit of a drag (can we please have a moratorium on final video game levels that sequentially throw everything you've previously encountered at you?), but otherwise I love the whole experience.

Honorable mentions go to FTL and the XBLA version of Spelunky.

I think Deus Ex would be on my list except the boss battles kind of ruined things for me. I had a super-stealthy/non-combative developed character, and I couldn't handle the 2nd boss on normal difficulty, which made me feel as if I was playing the game wrong by focusing on stealth. That's lame. I've yet to pick up Dishonored, but I'm pretty stoked about that game too (after being burned by Deus Ex it was very encouraging to read something on like Kotaku or Joystiq or somewhere that quoted one of the designers saying that they didn't feel any necessity to include bosses... awesome).

Overall, a great year for games with randomly generated content.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Deus Ex can't be your GOTY! It wasn't this year. Which saves me from having to figure out whether I like it or Dishonored more, thankfully.

[Orv]

AC3 is making a swift run for my aorta, still in contention though.

[melmer]

Honorable mentions go to FTL and the XBLA version of Spelunky.

spelunkys half price on xbla at the moment, should i bother? i really didn't like the trial...i guess thats my answer then

[Badfinger]

Dishonored, FTL, XCOM, Borderlands, and Day Z are all incredible games I've played this year.

Spec Ops is quite interesting, but I'm currently being dragged down by the generic shooterness while playing through a section where my squad mates keep dying. I like Torchlight but the time crunch has gotten to me and I've not put barely any time in it. I haven't started The Walking Dead yet because it's something I'd like to experiment playing through with someone else with me (girlfriend) making decisions at the same time. Why can't I make myself play through The Witcher?

I will continue my tradition of not paying more than like $15 for Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, so those might end up in my 2013-14 2012 game of the year pile.

I can't stop playing League of Legends.

Far Cry looks absolutely awesome, but is not out yet. The same goes for Hawken, Planetside 2 just released, and holy smokes I completely forgot Baldur's Gate: Fancied Up Edition is still scheduled to release this year.

I don't even touch my consoles anymore, and this is a HELL of a year for video games. I haven't even mentioned Dark Souls (which would NOT be on my GOTY list, but would be for others).

[sclpls]

Deus Ex can't be your GOTY! It wasn't this year. Which saves me from having to figure out whether I like it or Dishonored more, thankfully.

Haha crazy... I could have sworn it came out this year... but you're right. I must have just picked it up this year...

[twmac]

spelunkys half price on xbla at the moment, should i bother? i really didn't like the trial...i guess thats my answer then

Thanks for the tip! Have been meaning to buy this for a while and that convinced me.

[Kolzig]

My GOTY is Sean & Jake's The Walking Dead.

It was just such a thrill ride and for me the countdown to tears is now over.

I should've know that it's the Idle Thumbs guys who would achieve that.

[Sno]

So i've been curious, does the release of Far Cry 3 affect anybody's lists here?

Also, upon further reflection, i think Xenoblade was really my game of 2012.

[Frenetic Pony]

I have played sooo many video games this year. More than I've played in years. I've got Halo 4 (an early christmas gift) sitting in my Xbox. DOTA 2 matches are going well, Dragon's Dogma and Mario Power Tennis are both in the mail on their way to me.

I've enjoyed so many games, and yet The Walking Dead is the only one besides FEZ that's managed to reach beyond "oh, game" and hit that sweet spot that sells me that video games are great, and it hit's it more often than FEZ (which drops off quickly). I don't even feel terribly great playing The Walking Dead. Zombies? The Apocalypse? All over sold and was never terribly interested in terms of themes. Horror? Depressing shit? Definitely not my cup of tea. Adventure gaming? Gah, I think the first Monkey Island is the only one I've ever beat. Yet somehow it manages to be great enough that I got halfway through, and may damn well get the other half of the way through at some point. Yay video games!

[ThunderPeel2001]

I guess we'll all have to re-vote in the New Year... I hadn't played Hotline Miami last time I voted, and things like that.

[Yasawas]

I've had a weird year. I spent half of it being utterly consumed by Dark Souls and I'm genuinely starting to feel it's changed my tastes forever, specifically since I finished it I find myself gravitating more toward retro and retro-styled games. I bought a Super Famicom, set up a Wii for emulation, hooked my PS2 back up even. I haven't played XCOM though it looks and sounds like something I would've been all over this time last year, I picked up Dishonored cheap and was bored by it. Nothing else in the second half of the year has really interested me. I've completed a ton of games but almost nothing from 2012.

One thing I did buy, finish and thoroughly adore was The Walking Dead. Picked up cheap during a PSN sale and lay untouched until late November when my Twitter feed exploded with people completing the series. I'd always wanted to like a Telltale game but never really had until that, played through it all over three days and was left with that great feeling like the first time I beat Portal, or Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, or Journey where I wanted to grab people who don't play games and force them to try it and experience something unique and special unachievable by other means.

Journey is a pretty strong 2012 contender for me too now I think of it, also to a lesser extent The Unfinished Swan. Both thoroughly enjoyable explorative experiences which I loved whilst playing but did not leave as strong an impression as The Walking Dead.

[miffy495]

I don't know about overall goty, but Sleeping Dogs has definitely taken my open-world-goty award. Each year there's one open world game that totally grabs me. Past contenders have been Just Cause 2, Saint's Row 3, and Red Faction Guerilla. I get sucked into them and can't stop until I've done EVERYTHING. I got every collectible in Sleeping Dogs, did every security camera thing, every race, even all the damn karaoke songs. I completed the shit out of that game, and I'm about to start the Halloween DLC. Guys, that game is pretty good.

[Orv]

I'm gonna be unorthodox again this year and give my overall GOTY to My Experience With The Mass Effect Trilogy.

As you're all well aware by this point, Mass Effect is something I don't hold a lot of love for, both as games and as an IP. It's not necessarily that I've come like or appreciate them more than I already did, with Mass Effect 2 being one of my favorite RPGs of all time. What I have stumbled onto is a deeper appreciation for video gaming in general, and I think, a more varied nuance of hatred for stupid things. Mass Effect once to me represented a drought of intelligence and novelty in storytelling with a remarkably solid second act. Kind of like Henry VIII, or Inception.

The first ME remains a horrendous game to play, but I'm willing to give it a lot of concessions in that vein because of what it was attempting to do during a downward slope in PC RPGs. It's not particularly fun to play in a mechanical sense, but it gives an overall impression of gravitas and sly knowledge of what the player is expecting. Unfortunately it also gives an overwhelming impression that somewhere between KOTOR 1 and Mass Effect, BioWare shed anyone with a semblance of literary sense or even the simple ability to discern when a character really needs to shut the fuck up.

I scoffed initially at everyone's insistence that ME1 is a detective story and to an effect I still do. I get where the sentiment comes from but I would tie ME1's analogy wagon to another horse. I think perhaps a noir/tragicomedy would be more apt, and I think that fits better with the overall plot of the Mass Effect universe at a macro level. In the rush to control the genophage, to stop the Quarian/Geth conflict, to help the Illusive Man, coerced or otherwise, it's a very long joke with a very painful gutpunchline. ME is not a masterpiece of storytelling or worldcrafting, but it is a modern tragedy in more ways than the story alone. It's deeply saddening to me, after having gone through the series in such a concerted rush, that it came down to what it did.

Mass Effect 2 is still not the masterpiece I would like it to be, but it comes gut-wrenchingly close, and similar to AC2 over AC1 is a marked improvement in almost everything but what matters. ME2 swiftly violates and abandons any preconceptions you might have about this being your story, and carries on with a rollercoaster of equally sagacious and devastating choices and consequences within the scope of the game itself. The overall story is weaker, with less of a focus on the end of the goddamn universe and more of a focus on interpersonal relationships that hold no bearing on the larger world. However, despite the missteps in a few of those relationships, the exploration of the majority of them is in many ways a coup of video game story. Not since "Heya!" have I so wanted to strangle a video game character as I have Jack. That said, the focus on Cerberus and the problems of humanity rather than playing space cop strike a heavy blow against what could have been an utterly enrapturing game.

Mass Effect 3 has automatically engaged fetch quests and can go fuck itself for a wide variety of reasons, but primarily that one. The Starchild is vomitously offensive to anyone with a brain or who has been awake during the course of the last two games. War Score is a mechanic that, much like the final missions of ME2, didn't need to exist, much less effect your story in a meaningful way. Mordin is dead, you bastards. Yet beyond all of that, is the ending. The ending of the first Assassin's Creed, a series of games with an eerily similar quality arc, was decried as monstrous, villainous, a crime and offense against sanity. Mass Effect is the button prompt heard round the world, but certainly out of proportion. It's a choice that puts a final rubber stamp on the coffin of player agency in the Mass Effect universe, and smacks heavily of a rush job. Alternatively, the writing staff was murdered and replaced with a panel of heroine addicted prepubescent sea otters. Whatever the reason, it should probably be classed as a felony.

Is it a betrayal of everything BioWare's black grimoire stands for? Hardly. Is it the most missed and scorned chance for greatness gaming has seen? I struggle to think of a better candidate. The Mass Effect games for me now parallel some of our greatest tragedies. The ending of the trilogy is the scorched corpse of Chernobyl, the destruction of choice not unlike Odysseus' choices in his voyage home. Mordin is Carl Sagan, too wonderful and gone too soon. The volus adept you meet in ME2 is an analogy for the Cold War. I'm struggling to be offensive without crossing a real line here so I'll end that series of analogies.

Suffice to say, I was wrong about Mass Effect, but I was also so, so right.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Nice write up!

Don't think that the Illusive Man was in the first game though, was he?

[melmer]

Nope, he lived up to his name and eluded the first game

Awesome write up!

[Orv]

That section was more of an overview of the big arcs in the trilogy but I mostly picked things from the first game. Woops! Though to be fair the Geth/Quarian and Genophage issues are settled later on in the trilogy as well, they're just some of the bigger arcs to me.

[Luftmensch]

2012... A great year for games?

just wait until the year of the PS3.

I will say though. As much as people laughed and joked that the hardware wouldn't last, I think it can be said that this hardware generation really is seeing serious improvement as it drags on. Of course as a PC/indie gamer In not really experiencing generations like I used to.

I guess WiiU hasn't released any GOTY contenders?

[melmer]

The last of us will be the game of the generation I'm sure of it

[ThunderPeel2001]

The last of us will be the game of the generation I'm sure of it

It'll be awesome, but no one will buy it because they will have moved on... How often has that happened?