The Best Games of 2012
I know it’s March. But games take a long time to play, guys. Especially when there is so much great stuff to play, as there was in 2012. We’ve only now managed to make our way through the veritable sea of awesome games that 2012 dumped into our hard drives and disc trays, and we’re here to present you with our humble list of our considerations of the ten best games of 2012.
10. Super Hexagon | Steam (PC/Mac/Linux), Android, iOS | $2.99
I’m a bit of a retro gamer in that I long for brutal difficulty every now and then. Super Hexagon is a return to the days when “Nintendo hard” was a compliment rather than a disparagement: the days when games would punish you for the smallest mistake, but then encourage you to try again immediately. It pushes you and pushes you until you finally manage to beat it, overcoming its seemingly impossible challenge: only to be beset by yet another, even harder challenge.
Games like Super Hexagon – the BIT.TRIP series comes to mind, particularly RUNNER – live or die on how strong the compulsion for the player to keep going is. That “one more try” drive that quickly turns into “ten more tries” can turn an alright game into an outstanding one. And indeed, Super Hexagon is an alright game when taken on its gameplay alone. You control a small triangle cursor that revolves around a central hexagon, and you avoid lines and shapes that travel from the edge of the screen to the center hexagon. Very simple. What makes Super Hexagon one of the best games of the year is how well it keeps you playing and how well it encourages without feeling overly punishing.
When you fail, it feels like YOU failed, not the game being cheap. Additionally, failure isn’t punishing, because a “success” – the best possible outcome – takes only 60 seconds. Failure means that you’ve only expended less than 60 seconds of your time, so losing doesn’t feel like in BIT.TRIP RUNNER where you’ve just spend five minutes running through all the obstacles on 1-11: Odyssey and died right before the end. Even further, trying again is as simple as touching the screen: once you do, everything starts right back over. BUT THERE’S MORE. Rather than starting the music at the same place every time, the music is randomized and starts at a different point on the track every time you restart. This prevents you from feeling as if you’re not progressing since you don’t keep returning to the same point.
The randomized nature of the game works wonderfully to keep you sucked in, and what only takes 60 seconds to complete in a successful run can quickly turn into hours of playtime, trying to not only break that 60 second barrier but also continue past it, ranking up higher and higher scores. It’s a wonderful bit of classic arcade gaming come again, and it’s a spectacular mobile game. - bc
“Game over.”
9. Borderlands 2 | Steam (PC/Mac), Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 ($59.99)
When this game first released in September, I, much to my dismay, was unable to play it. Now that I’ve finally got my hands on this game, I’ve had one of the most fun experiences with a videogame ever.
Borderlands 2 brings you back to the land of Pandora, a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by the insane, blood-hungry villain Handsome Jack. You play as one of four characters, a bulky guy who wields double guns and goes ball-deep into a gun fight called the Gunzerker, the Commando character who uses his turret and a mix of offensive and defensive play, the Siren who is the only female character and uses elemental magic is bring down enemies, and, finally, the Assassin who uses specializes in stealth, swords and long range weapons to take down some baddies.
The charm of this game is derived from the insanity that ensues on Pandora while you fight to defeat Handsome Jack in this comic book-styled world. With the ability to use a combination of over 17.75 million types of crazy imaginative guns (which is a Guinness world record for guns in a video game) and a leveling up system that takes some of the best aspects from the RPG genre, this game truly is the most creative first-person shooter of all time. While there is no PvP online multiplayer, there is an addictive co-op mode where you can play online with your friends the same as you would in story mode by yourself, causing havoc in Pandora, except with more people. What truly makes this title stand out is the hilarious crude dialogue and incredibly loveable, crazy characters, such as everybody’s favorite robot, Claptrap! As a result of this insane world, amazingly solid gameplay and the funniest characters ever, Borderlands 2 has rightfully earned its spot in the top videogames of 2012. – jb
"Sorry about the mess. Everything Jack kills, he dumps here -- bandits, Vault Hunters, Claptrap units... If I sound pleased about this, it's only because my programmers made this my default tone of voice! I'm actually quite depressed!"
8. Pokemon Black and White Version 2 | Nintendo DS | $29.99
Since its debut in Japan in 1996, Pokemon has turned into a firestorm of popularity with its videogames, anime, trading card game, and more. With the release of Pokemon Black and White Version in late 2010/early 2011, it is generally agreed upon that the series had a huge revitalization despite being previously thought an old and tried series that was reaching the end of its life as a premier videogame title. The 5th generation brought players to the brand new Unova region, based on New York City, and because of this, isolation from the previous regions (which were all based upon regions in Japan) occurred. An entirely new set of Pokemon were introduced to catch and train in your quest to become the very best. With this came the sense that Gamefreak was starting all over again, bringing new life into the series. Because of this, the players were able to follow a much deeper story and greater character development than had previously been seen in the series. You fought Team Plasma and their leader, N, to stop them from freeing Pokemon from their trainers due to some false ideal that Pokemon and trainers should not be together.
Fast forward two years and we have the opening of Pokemon Black and White Version 2. You play as a new character from a town in Southwest Unova, an area of Unova that was previously unexplored in Black and White, as you meet old characters from the past and fight a new Team Plasma that wishes to take over the world under the command of N’s adoptive and abusive father, Ghetsis. In this title, Gamefreak did not create new Pokemon, but allowed you to catch native Unova pokemon and Pokemon from years past throughout the main story. The ability to have an Arcanine and multiple Eevelutions while challenging gyms was a huge blast of nostalgia. With new gyms and trainers, a massive amount of post-game content, the ability to fight every gym leader and champion from every region in the Pokemon World Tournament and a deepened story allowed Pokemon Black and White Version 2 to become the most fully realized Pokemon game yet and made me even more excited to see what the first fully 3D main Pokemon games, X and Y, can do. – jb
“I see! If Trainers believe in their Pokémon to the fullest extreme, as you do, their Pokémon partners will also give everything they have! So that must be the answer I've been looking for.”
7. Papo & Yo | PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network) | $14.99
Oh man, this game. This is one of the most tonally dissonant games I’ve ever played. Rife with a magical realist aesthetic, the game uses the whimsical atmosphere and fantastic gameplay mechanics to tell a grim, disturbing tale of child abuse and alcoholism that wrecks a family. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to write.
The gameplay is rather simple: the player controls Quico, a young boy with the power to affect his surroundings in unique ways. There are white lines scattered around the often urban environments that, when interacted with, cause homes to move out of place and create new paths, cause the ground to stretch upward and form a staircase, and even cause things to float in the air and make a path across a gap. It’s a bizarre game mechanic that makes what appears to be a realistic world into a magical one (there’s that magical realism that’s all the rage these days).
The game is a fun platformer, but it really comes into its own with the appearance of Monster. Monster is an ostensibly helpful large creature that allows Quico to clear obstacles he couldn’t otherwise clear on his own, and it adds a new dimension to the platforming that works very nicely. But Monster also likes to eat frogs – he really, really likes frogs – and that causes a problem. When Monster eats a frog, he flies into a berserker rage and will start harming everything around him: including the player. The player then has to do his best to calm Monster down. It’s a dark gameplay mechanic, and it’s a touchingly sad one that turns the whimsical aesthetic of the game on its head.
The game is a joy to play, and while it’s a dark and poignant rumination on familial distress, it’s an exciting and inventive game nonetheless. This is a game with an agenda, a game that wants to explore these dark depths of the human heart and mind, and it does that with tremendous style and an uncomfortable tonal dissonance that elevates it above most games of its kind. - bc
“To my mother, brothers and sisters with whom I survived the monster in my father.”
6. The Unfinished Swan | PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network) | $14.99
This is a game that came right out of left field, a complete and total surprise. Newcomer Giant Sparrow, picked up by Sony for an exclusive PSN deal, delivers one of the most unique games I’ve ever played. It’s a visually beautiful game that adopts a storybook aesthetic, has a child’s heart at its center, and tells an interesting and touching story. It’s also a veritable sandbox of clever and inventive game design.
The story is a simple one that plays out like a fairy tale, involving kings and a mysteriously elusive swan. The story is told primarily through storybook pages that player must uncover throughout the landscape, but in a brilliant bit of synergy, the story is very much intertwined with the gameplay. The king in the story would use a magical paintbrush to create cities and kingdoms for himself, but would always abandon them before completion as he grew discontented. Similarly, the game shifts between gameplay styles with reckless abandon, moving from one to the other just as the previous one appears to be almost fully explored.
It’s a cursory bit of gameplay evolution, but it strangely works. Controls are constant: the player moves and uses the triggers to throw balls of a liquid onto the landscape. In the first, most well-known level, those balls are of black paint, and they create large paint splotches on the barren white landscape, revealing the hidden features. It’s a beautiful bit of art to pull it off, and the gameplay is lots of fun as you toss paint everywhere to uncover the furniture and walls. In the second level, the black paint is replaced with a ball of water, which grows vines that stand out a lovely green against the white and grey shadowed environment, allowing the player to traverse the city with a bit of clever progression. The ball of paint changes each “chapter” (because it’s a storybook!), and each new gameplay element feels natural and inventive.
The game ends a tad abruptly, but I still felt very satisfied come the conclusion. It’s a beautiful game, both in the visuals and in the story, and one that comes very highly recommended. - bc
“The labyrinth was meant to beautiful, and it was. It was not meant to be practical, and it was not.”
5. Xenoblade Chronicles | Nintendo Wii | $49.99 (GameStop exclusive in North America)
My favorite genre of games is the role-playing game, and especially the JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game). Games such as Final Fantasy fall into this category, having 40+ hour campaigns full of rich story and lore, generally strong gameplay, and a lot of level grinding. For the past couple of years, there hasn’t been a truly magnificent JRPG, with Final Fantasy XIII being the only one to come close, and it left a bad taste in the mouths of many Final Fantasy fans despite its gorgeous visuals and amazing sound track. 2012 was also the last year for the Nintendo Wii, so nobody expected anything truly great to come out for it after Skyward Sword. Then came Xenoblade Chronicles. This is the game that all RPG players were yearning for. A visually impressive game despite the Wii’s graphic capabilities, Xenoblade tells the story of an orphan boy named Shulk and his quest to save his world. This world takes place on two titan robots Bionis and Mechonis that were frozen after a legendary battle over the endless ocean. Colonies were spring up on these now life infested titans. These tribes then turn to war on the neighboring titans and chaos ensues.
As you journey along, you make new friends and partners to join your party, as in any good JRPG. The difference is that you really feel something for these characters: everybody is fighting for something that they believe in, all of which are being affected by the war in one way or another. All of the voice actors are British, so hearing the accents that I grew up hearing in my family was actually quite fun! The gameplay, however, is what truly earned this game a spot on this list. It employs a Real Time Action based combat system where your party can auto-attack with their weapons or can be manually controlled when using your special powers called Arts and Talent Arts, allowing for more variation and strategy in battles while moving around to dodge attacks. The difference between this and most other JRPG’s is the fact that there aren’t any healing items and you can only use healing Arts to heal your characters within battle, adding yet another layer of strategy to this already perfectly crafted battle system. With a mix of a classic engaging storyline, lovable characters with neat voice acting and a near flawless battle system, any fan of the JRPG genre will have to play Xenoblade Chronicles as soon as possible, otherwise they are missing out on what will be considered a classic for years to come.
As a side note, without the support from online gaming mobilizations such as Operation Rainfall, this game would not have even come to North America. Operations such as these are incredibly important and a powerful means of letting the gamer’s voice be heard. So please support these groups, such as Operation Moonfall! – jb
“Born into a world of strife, against the odds, we choose, to fight!”
4. Far Cry 3 | Steam (PC), Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 | $49.99 (Steam), $59.99 (360/PS3)
Far Cry 3 came out very late in the year during December, missing all of the videogame awards and being snubbed by many awards that I believe this title deserves. The Far Cry series was never one of Ubisoft’s most popular, along with Far Cry 2 being incredibly lackluster, so the hype for this particular game wasn’t too high. After playing this, I can confidently say it is the best first person shooter or open world game to ever be released. You play as Jason Brody, just a rich college kid who is going on vacation with his brothers, girlfriend, and best friends at a tropical island to party, get wasted, and play some extreme sports. Little did they know that this seemingly deserted island is full of pirates who make their money off of drug and sex trafficking and that they would be captured by the pirate’s leader, Vaas Montenegro, who also has one of the best and widest vocabularies for a psychopathic madman you could ever imagine. *chuckles* As Jason and his older brother attempt to escape from Vaas at the beginning, his brother is shot, and Jason runs into the jungle to flee. After killing for the first time, he is saved by the native tribe on the island and becomes the warrior of Rakyat legend.
As you explore the massive and beautiful open world of Rook Island, saving your friends from the pirates and helping the Rakyat take back their island, you complete side quests, hunt rare animals in order to craft their hides into new weapon holsters and equipment, and gain experience to unlock new killing skills as Jason becomes the destined Rakyat warrior. This is the most seamless open world experience I have ever played: I never felt overwhelmed by the massive amount of content and things to do, all of it complementing the main story to get well over 30 hours of gameplay, not to mention a decent co-op and a respectable PvP online multiplayer. The story follows Jason’s path to insanity as he becomes a part of this island, from being an innocent college kid who has never even hurt anything to a blood loving death machine. This theme of insanity resonates throughout the game until the very end where you are given the option to stay on the island or go home with your saved friends. This is achieved through Jason’s journey to become the Rakyat warrior of legend, an ensemble cast that is truly memorable, a villain that serves as a foil and contrast for you to the point that you are questioning who is actually more insane, and a massive amount of content that never becomes overwhelming and feels like it is actually a part of the main story of Jason Brody. All of this makes Far Cry 3 my personal favorite game of the year. – jb
“Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact same fucking thing, over and over again, expecting shit to change. That. Is. Crazy.”
3. Kid Icarus: Uprising | Nintendo 3DS | $34.99
This is one of my favorite handheld games of all time primarily because of how unbelievably fun it is. I can’t really put my finger on what about it speaks to me, but playing the game fills me with this childlike sense of absolute excitement and enthusiasm.
Kid Icarus: Uprising is the first installment in the series in 19 years, but rather than being the Metroid clone that it once was, it’s a game all its own. It’s dominated by two gameplay styles, with each mission comprising a segment of each: flight and land. The flight segments are an on-rails shooter. Pit is free to move around in a two-dimensional plane, but the path of his flight and the camera are fixed. Pit fires his weapon of choice at enemies, and after five minutes (it’s always exactly five minutes), he lands and begins the ground segment, which is a standard third person run and gun. It’s not cover based, Pit uses the same weapon, and the enemies are usually the same.
The game has some very strong sound design: the impact noises of the weapon and the death sound of the enemies is tremendously satisfying, making the wholesale slaughter of enemies an incredibly entertaining task. It lends a fast pace to the proceedings, as rather than sluggishly and methodically killing one’s way through the game, the game tends to encourage fast and rapid death of enemies with its rewarding sound design. There’s a lot of stuff to collect as well, in particular various weapons. There’s a wide arsenal of weapon types, from the iconic bows to things like guns and portable cannons, and each weapon has its own feel. It’s fun to experiment, particularly since the sound design is so universally great.
Perhaps the game’s best idea is the sliding scale of difficulty. Each mission, before you begin, offers a recommended difficulty based on your performance in prior missions. Difficulty is based on a scale of 0.1 to 9.9, the lowest being laughably easy and the highest being brutally punishing. The game scales difficulty remarkably well, and rewards players to playing at higher difficulty than recommended. It really fosters skill growth remarkably well.
There’s a lot of factors that make this game so fun – but overall it’s this persistent, playful tone of both the writing, which is self-aware and rather humorously spirited, and the actual gameplay itself, which seems engineered at all ends to be satisfying for all players, casual or hardcore. It’s a wonderful game for those looking for a good 3DS game, and is one of the best games on the system to date. - bc
“Old Pit's going to teach you even MORE new tricks!”
2. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance | Nintendo 3DS | $39.99
If you know either me or Brandon, you know that Kingdom Hearts is one of our all-time favorite series. It’s an action RPG that takes Final Fantasy and gives it a big twist: Walt-freaking-Disney. All of the worlds and characters you visit are from Disney movies and tales. It takes the darker, more serious story elements of Final Fantasy and mixes together the humor and charm of Disney for one of the most memorable experiences you will ever have. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is the first game in the series on the Nintendo 3DS, and finally sets up the story for what will happen in the conclusion to the epic tale in Kingdom Hearts III. This game finds our hero, Sora, and his best friend, Riku, taking the Mark of Mastery exam to become Keyblade Masters in the inevitable battle with the evil that is Master Xehanort. You play as both Sora and Riku alternatively in the Dream Worlds, worlds that are in a deep slumber after succumbing to the Heartless, in a quest to awaken these worlds from this deep sleep. We return to the starry residence of Traverse Town where we meet characters from the game The World Ends With You as both Sora and Riku learn how to interact within the dream worlds using a new mechanic called “flow motion.” The addition of flow motion makes the already beloved Kingdom Hearts battle system even faster and more fun, creating more depth than previous titles. The overall platforming that has always been a bit of a challenge for the series was also drastically improved, in part to the 3D capabilities of the 3DS and also in part to the wonderful flow motion system.
While gameplay for the game isn’t much different than its predecessors (it’s similar to
Birth By Sleep), what really makes this title stands out as one of the best games of 2012 is its story. Fair warning, this section will contain many spoilers. As Sora and Riku journey throughout these Disney inspired worlds of movies such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Fantasia, they both encounter dark figures from their pasts. Sora learns of the hearts trapped inside of his own, one of the heroes from Birth By Sleep, Ventus who is the reason Sora is even a keyblade wielder, Roxas, Sora’s nobody who was once a part of the original Organization XIII, and Xion, a girl constructed from Sora’s memories. This was all a part of Master Xehanort’s plan to create a new Organization XIII filled with 13 vessels of darkness, all extensions of Xehanort himself. He planned on capturing Sora and using him as his last vessel, but was soon saved in a rescue mission into the dream world by Riku, King Mickey, Lea, and Sora’s partners Donald and Goofy. This is where we learned of Xehanort’s true plan to gather 13 vessels of darkness to combat the eventual 7 guardians of light in an epic and destined battle to forge the legendary χ-Blade to unlock Kingdom Hearts. Once Sora is
saved, we learn that only Riku passes the Mark of Mastery exam and is the new
Keyblade Master, while unexpectedly, Sora did not pass, having to take the exam
again, which he is more than okay with. Meanwhile, Mickey and Yen Sid are
discussing what course of action to take again Xehanort in what inevitably will
be Kingdom Hearts III, and that is to gather 7 keyblade masters as the
guardians of light. This implies bringing back Ventus, Aqua and (maybe) Terra
from
Birth By Sleep, obviously Sora, Riku and Mickey, but in a
surprise twist, we learn Sora’s childhood friend Kairi is also a keyblade
wielder, but also a Princess of Heart. Where this goes is unexpected. In a
final twist, we learn that Lea (or Axle’s “somebody” for lack of a better term)
can actually wield a Keyblade himself. What happens to Lea is currently
unknown. This is the biggest leap in the story towards
Kingdom Hearts
III, and along with its already stellar gameplay, charming world, script
and lovable characters from Disney,
Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is
one of the best games of 2012. – jb
“There are so many hearts that are connected to yours.”
1. Journey | PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network) | $14.99
Most gamers today need no convincing that games are an art form. It’s something that has finally become widely accepted in our community. To the outside world, however, games have a negative stigma that keeps them from being widely acknowledged as an art form, and that’s a damn shame: prominent critics of other art forms scoff at them, notably preeminent film critic Roger Ebert. But games are undoubtedly an art form. We simply need the right game to demonstrate this to the world.
Journey is that game, and it’s the best game of 2012 and one of the best games ever made, period.
Journey is a game primarily about movement – the player moves forward through a vast landscape in a world gone by. They pass ruined cities buried under endless sands. They venture through a dark tunnel that feels as if it’s underwater. They climb a snowy mountain peak and face the frigid winds. All as they move inevitably toward the mountain in the distance, marked by a tall beacon of light emitting from its peak. For a game to have gameplay limited primarily to movement and minor platforming elements seems like a very basic and uninteresting game – but the way in which Journey presents itself is what makes it a transcendent experience.
The game is a multiplayer one, but not in the traditional sense. The player will randomly encounter other players as they travel through the game world. The players will not know the usernames of the other, nor will they be able to communicate beyond a simple chime sound that they can emit at will. And yet, despite the entirely impersonal framing of the game’s multiplayer, it feels more human than any other multiplayer game I’ve ever played. Adventuring with another person, I developed a tremendous affection for their avatar: I would stay close by them at all times and do my best to direct them out of harm’s way, and then go back and retrieve them should they fall behind or get caught by one of the machines. I’ve never known this person and never will, but the game creates fascinating bonds between two completely unknown parties. When I would lose a companion should they fall too far behind or advance too far ahead of me, and I would then scale the mountain on my own, I felt this tremendous sadness overcome me. When I would meet a companion early on and then travel with them the rest of the game, scaling the mountain together, there was elation and excitement.
By stripping away communication and personality, the game creates an incredibly human multiplayer experience in a community known for being rather rude on the whole. That’s a miracle, and that the game can do this at all is impressive. But that it does so with such radiant beauty in the visuals, music, and storytelling?
That’s art. - bc
“C’est pour cela que je suis nee.”
