Hello everyone and welcome to my list of the 5 best and worst games of 2012. First I would like to apologize for my long absence, I have been focusing on trying to get into a school and work for the last couple of months which has taken up a large amount of my time. However I have also been trying to catch up on alot of movies, games and other misc. things that have come out in 2012. I am trying to focus on becoming a better reviewer and take in different types of entertainment in order to better broaden my scope and find what I feel is truly my favorites of the year.
TOP 5 BEST/WORST GAMES OF 2012!
The Best
5. Mass Effect 3
Okay, lets get this out of the way, the ending of the game is god awful. It's full of plot holes, has an obvious deus ex machina, is unsatisfying, takes nothing we have done before hand into consideration like Bioware said it would, gives you a three choice decision that comes out of nowhere and leaves you with nothing but a sour taste in your mouth at the end. It's a rushed poorly executed ending that was there to meet a release date.
That said however, does the ending make the rest of the game bad. For me, that's a big fat no. "Mass Effect 3" is the culmination of one of the most important and epic trilogy's that gaming has ever seen and it's the end result of many years of trial and error from Bioware.
One of the things that stands out the most is the improved combat system, I feel that Bioware has found a happy medium between ME1's RPG style and ME2's more shooter style. It feels good to level up your vanguard so much to where you can, charge in, deliver a heavy melee and then blast him away with your shot gun.
But of course the real meat to Mass Effect is in it's stories and characters that you meet. In ME3 alot of familiar faces show up in some capacity but they don't weigh down the cast with every single character you've met, this gives them time to make some new characters for you to meet but also to further flesh out one's that you have had a long standing relationship with. The new characters that they create are all very memorable and likable, even if some are a little bit bland (I'm looking at you James) but they are all interesting to talk to and get to know. The returning characters are still interesting and they becoming even more so when you have to accompany them on very important missions that are not only important to you but to them and their ideals.
The stories I created with these characters will stay in my mind just as long as the ending will to show the good side of the the bad. Mordin saving the day, Tali saying I love you as I take on a giant reaper, watching Legion bring peace to two peoples and seeing the pain on Liaras face as her home world falls to the reapers. These are characters I have come to deeply care about and I believe that any game that can make you care so much about imaginary characters through the interactivity of holding a controller has done something amazingly right.
4. Dishonored
I'm gonna admit something, I am not good at stealth games. I understand the concept behind them, that it's ultimately just as satisfying to sneak around letting no one know you were there in the first place as it is to run in and take out a base of 50 people with an assault rifle. I've tried to play many stealth games, many I love (Metal Gear Solid) and many I hate (Tenchu). So imagine my surprise when I picked up "Dishonored" that it wasn't forcing me to be stealthy, I just wanted to be stealthy.
One of the best things about "Dishonored" is the many varied ways that you can play it. Do you want to play it safe and easier and charge in with mystical powers in tow? or do you want to try the harder way and sneak around alerting no one to your presence Maybe you want to kill everyone you come across, maybe you will just knock them unconscious. Maybe you will actually assassinate your main target, or maybe you could just slander their name so bad that they are forced to run out of town. It's these kinds of choices and outcomes that really make the player feel engrossed in this world and makes you feel good about your actions in your own unique way.
The Atmosphere in the game is also quite incredible. The city of Dunwall is fully realized through the various conversations you overhear or the people. You feel the dirt and grime as you make your way through a shady part of the city, you almost feel relieved when you step into a large beautiful building. You can ultimately feel the pain these people go through and understand that this city is a city on the edge of destruction.
While I will fully admit that the story in "Dishonored" isn't the most memorable and the main character is anything but fleshed out, the game play is ultimately where "Dishonored" shines. Offering unique varied options that the player themselves makes and discovers is it's strongest quality and what truly makes it it's own game. Plus you can make swarms of rats eat people, and there's nothing wrong with that.
3. The Walking Dead
Talk about a game that came out of left field for me. I had fallen out with the TV show and the comics and had absolutely no interest in "The Walking Dead" for multiple reasons. Then I heard about this game, at first I was very pessimistic and ultimately brushed it off as a quick cash in on the TV show and the comics popularity. But then I noticed that Telltale was making the game. I had previously enjoyed their back to the future game and Sam and Max game, but then I also remembered their Jurassic Park game and feared the worst. Never the less I decided to purchased the first episode to see if anything good would come out of it. And after purchasing all 5 episodes later, I can safely say that "The Walking Dead" is one of the most emotional moving stories and character pieces I have seen in any medium.
"The Walking Dead" for me lives and breaths on two things, it's stories and it's characters. The story in this game is an incredible work of writing, creating many different characters but managing to inject them with life and humanity. Lee Everett is a character crafted by the player, he may have some sustainable traits put in by the developer, but the decisions he makes are ultimately left up to the player. It's you who is going to decide who out of 10 people gets the 4 pieces of food. You who decides who may live and who might die, will you help your friend out? Or abandon him to ensure your own survival? Yes the ending may always be the same but it's how you get to that ending and the story you crafted that really matters.
"The Walking Dead" also manages to create one of the best kid characters in the form of Clementine. Clementine is always with you in the game (except for the very beginning) but the thing is is that she never feels like a burden. You never feel burdened with her alongside you. She's very kind and polite, but will be forceful if she has to. She's small and weaker but she knows how to take care of herself and she's both funny and fun to be around without ever becoming annoying. I don't think I can remember another kid character that I actually wanted to be around more then Clementine since I first met Razputin in "Psychonauts".
"The Walking Dead" could have been even higher on this list if it had actually had more game play in it. The puzzles are easy to say the least and the actual game is basically just walking around looking for the next story bit or dialogue option. That said it's still high on this list for crafting one of the most well told stories in modern gaming and setting a new bar for adventure game stories.
2. Journey
Have you ever played a game where after your done with it you really don't know how to describe it? You know you liked it, but you don't know anything else. You don't know how to describe it or talk about it or even what the experience feels like. For me, that was "Journey".
It's hard for me to talk about "Journey" because I honestly have never played another game like it. I purchased "Journey" long after it had come out and every review I saw for it was very vague about what the actual game was like. So when the mid summer game drought came in, I decided to purchase "Journey" and see if I could understand what it was so many game journalists were floored by. By the end of the game I understood why so many people seemed vague on how the game played and felt, it was because each players journey was their own.
"Journey" is a game that wraps you up in its atmosphere and world. You feel the sun shining down on you as you make your way through the dessert. You feel the wind rushing through you as you surf down sand while the sun goes down in the distance, the gloomy eeriness in the underground or the freezing cold of the later parts of the game. It sucks you in and never lets you go, it's a game I played through in one sit and what was 2 hours of game play felt like 1.
But one of the most truly unique things about this game is it's engrossing and different co-op multiplayer. I myself am not a big fan of multiplayer for multiple reasons, but mostly I don't like the cooperation and interaction that one naturally has to give to participate with multiple people. But "Journey's" mutiplayer is wholly unique and it's own. There are no lobbies, no friends lists, no voice chat and not even a gamer tag on their character. You'll just be wandering the desert and out of nowhere you will see another hooded figure jumping around collecting symbols or scarf pieces. To play together all you have to do is stick together. That's it, and yet this leads to one of the most engrossing multiplayer experiences I've ever had. I think the image of our two characters trudging through the snow trying to keep our spirits up by trying to message each other will stay in my mind longer then some twelve year old yelling in my ear about how much I suck at Call of Duty.
"Journey" is simply one of those games that you have to play for yourself. To describe it to someone is meaningless as every journey is some one's own. But that experience is one that I will remember for a long time. "Journey" is simply a game unlike any other.
1. Far Cry 3
When it came down to the wire on which game I would choose as my game of the year, I was stuck between "Journey" and "Far Cry 3". One game was this unique beautiful game that defiys' description and the other is a dark twisted insane open island adventure filled with psychopaths, drugs and guns. But when it came right down to it, I had to ask myself one very important question. Which game let me blow up a Shark with an exploding arrow?
Yes I admit that in a list that has been up till now praising unique concepts and stories and varied game play ideals, to put a shooter at number one might sound downright insane. But honestly while I love all the games on this list, "Far Cry 3" is the game that I had the most fun playing this year. It's the game that keeps bringing me back over and over and over again to find and do other different things.
One of the best things about this game is it's environment This is one of the most fun sandboxes I've ever played around in. For one it's lush and beautiful, even when I play this on the Xbox it looks amazing. The sun shimmers, the nights are cold, the rain is harsh and it all adds into the immersion of the game world. There's something truly fun and frightening about stalking through the jungle in the rain with a bow and arrow when all of a sudden you get pounced on by a fierce angry tiger. Or while you scout an enemy position, out of no where a horde of Komodo Dragons will come into the enemy camp and wipe out all the enemy forces so that you can secure the outpost. It's these random chance encounters and various events that make the world truly feel alive and dangerous.
Now I will fully admit that while the characters of "Far Cry 3" are simply okay, like "The Walking Dead" one character truly stands out from the rest, and that's Vass. Vass is an amazing villain, at one moment he will be calm and collected and almost at the drop of a hat he will change into anger and backlash. He's a very charismatic character but he never gets too suave or sophisticated and always manages to stay on that fence between cool and collected and twisted and insane. One of my favorite parts of the game is Vass's insanity speech. It both perfectly encapsulates who Vass is and just how insane he is with out him actually realizing it. All of these things have made Vass one of my favorite villains in gaming, it just sucks he's only in half the game.
When it came down to "Far Cry 3" and "Journey" it really was a tough choice. I thought about why these games kept bringing me back over and over and over again. With "Journey" it was simple. It was the journey and how I made my journey my own. But with "Far Cry 3" many different thing kept bringing me back. The fully realized hunting and gathering system, Vass, the story, the island, the secrets, the places to discover. There is so much packed into "Far Cry 3" that I can't help but come back over and over again but each time I come back for one thing or another. Maybe this time I'm coming back for the story and the next time I'm coming back to hunt. All these factors is what makes "Far Cry 3" the funnest game I've played all year and what makes it my game of the year.
Well there certainly was alot of good games out this year but unfortunately there was also alot of crap.
The Worst
5. Resident Evil 6
You know what you get when you make a slightly less shitty version of "Resident Evil 5"? "Resident Evil 6". First I want to address something, "Resident Evil 6" has alot of really good things going in it's favor. The game looks great with high production values and and beautiful textures. The game also has great sound and huge replayability due to how many campaigns there are and the numerous ways to play it. However that doesn't stop the game from having such bad design choices go into it.
One of the biggest things that is wrong with "Resident Evil 6" is it's game play. The enhanced maneuvering and controls are good but the camera is so close to your character that often times you will be attacked from an enemy off screen and you can never make out what is attacking you and from where making combat both frustrating and annoying. One minuet you will be firing your gun at an enemy in front of you and when they get to close you will dodge roll back into a waiting horde of zombies. If you are not going to adjust other parts of the game to fit with your new character controls then you might as well not even bother changing the controls in the first place. The Coop is still pretty solid but the game doesn't take alot of opportunity's with it, just relegating it to "Help me up this ledge" "Help me open this door". At least in RE5 you could split up with one person taking a sniping position and the other taking on close quarters on the enemy. That felt cooperative and not just like 2 people are playing the same game with no variation for them to experiment with.
Another problem comes in the companion and enemy AI, It's incredibly inconsistent. At one point your partner will be incredibly smart and actually perform a flanking maneuver on the enemy and at other points they will leave you to die because they couldn't find the right place to pull you up on the ledge. It's certainly better then Sheva Aloderp from "Resident Evil 5" but that's only because they are able to point and shoot in the correct general direction. The enemy AI is also frequently in consistent. At one point they will be running into a wall and at other points you will have 3 regenerators all around you beating you sense less so that you have no time to actually get up and fight back.
There's alot more I could go into such as the the odd characterization on well established characters like Leon or the lack of characterization on characters who die, How the story seems to fade into the background or how like everyone I was yelling at the top of my voice "Fuck Chris's campaign". It's certainly better then "Resident Evil 5" but it's still held back by poor design choices and that it seems like it's confused as to what type of game it wants to be. Does it want to be a more action oriented game? A stealth game? A survival horror game? "Resident Evil 6" tries way to hard to please everyone and appeal to everyone and in the end it just doesn't please anyone.
4. 007 Legends
This one may be the most personal choice on this list. I am a big James Bond fan. I have seen all the movies, with my personal best and worst being "From Russia with Love" and "Die Another Day", and I have played many of the numerous games that Bonds name has been attached to over the years. From the very best (Goldeneye) to the worst (Goldeneye: Rouge Agent) I have played them all and I have wondered for years why the games industry seemed hesitant for to go back through Bonds history. There was a wealth of material that could be made into a at least semi decent Bond games with a little re-tweaking They had already tried to go and do this with the decent if not forgettable "From Russia with Love" game. So when I heard that for Bonds fiftieth anniversary Activision was going to be making a game that covered multiple Bond movies and significant moments from those movies I was ecstatic I should have known better because what I was nothing short of an insult to Bond fans.
Let's start with the story, or the lack of one. You play as bond, who is shot in the opening scene to "Skyfall" as you sink into the water you begin to reminisce about your career and remember key scenes and from other Bond movies. This sounds like a cool premise but the game mishandles it so badly. You are basically thrust into a scenario with little or no context as to what you are supposed to do, who anyone in this scene is or why we are even here. That's not much of a problem for me since I've seen the films but for others they will be completely lost and annoyed by the myriad of questions that will come up. "Why is there a naked gold woman laying on my bed?" "Why am I all of a sudden in a giant ice palace?" "Why am I in this ridiculous looking space suit on a space station near the moon?". This could easily be fixed with some sort of transition to the next scene, but there is no such things. Your just thrown into a new scenario, it's jarring to say the least. And like with all the Bond games Activision puts out now, all of the Bonds now have Daniel Craigs likeness. This wouldn't be so bad if the voice actor they hired for Bond was actually decent at acting. Most of the time he sounds wooden or bored and sound's nothing like Daniel Craig, it's so bad that you might as well be playing an entirely new Bond.
But as bad as the game muddles the story and the characters and the presentation, the biggest insult to me is the game play. The game may as well have been called "Call of 007". It feels almost copy and pasted from "Call of Duty" but feels infinitely worse. Now following "Call of Duty's " game play could work but there has to be enough original ideas in there to make it feel like it's own game. But it doesn't, it feels like a cheap knock off. Gun fights are confined to small confined areas (even when you are outside) and it treats you like an idiot with visionary cues that say "Follow" or "Chase". Worst off the game is boring as hell, forcing you to slog through missions filled with Brainless AI, meaningless shootouts and weapons that have no feeling or kick to them, you may as well be shooting BB pellets at them.
There is so much more wrong with this game, from the running time being only about 8 hours or the moronic AI or the bland multiplayer, but it can all be summed up like this. Activision doesn't care about James Bond. Why should it? It already has a triple A flagship game under it's belt that makes them millions every year so why put any effort into making another stand out franchise? This game is the nail in the coffin of James Bond license games from Activision. It's time for their License to be revoked and given to someone who might actually give a crap.
3. NeverDead
Oh Konami, what happened to you? You were once one of the biggest and best gaming companies that existed. Bringing us classics like Contra, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevainia, Zone of the Enders and Silent Hill. Now look at you. You managed to botch every single release you had this year. There was of course the sequel to "X blades" that came out called "Blades of Time" that you didn't even bother marketing so that no one even knew it came out. There was your re release of "Zone of the Enders " which had the combat slowed down and the frame rate drop significantly from the original. You released the MGSHD collection before releasing the MGS3 3DS port making the 3DS game pretty much needless for anyone who had already picked up the HD collection. And of course there's all the Silent Hill games you managed to screw up. Downpour was rushed out the gate, you delayed Book of Memories 3 times days before the release date and the HD collection I'm not even going to talk about. If I could cheat a little bit I think I would put all of Konami on this list, but instead I'll just put their only original release on here, because with "NeverDead" it looks like they are barely even trying to make anything new anymore.
The worst type of game in my opinion is the game that has good ideas and piss poor execution. "NeverDead" is such a game. It brings alot of interesting unique things to the table but completely falls flat on it's face when ever it tries to integrate them into the game. For instance the main character Bryce is immortal which means that he can't die. There fore his limbs, torso and head can be knocked away and you are able to move around piecing your self back together. This sounds like an interesting idea in theory but developer Rebellion never changes it up, so after the fifth time that you roll your head around looking for your arms and legs it starts to become tedious. The ability to throw your hand across the room and shoot a gun sounds cool but actually pulling it off reveals that it's largely useless as it barely hits anything. The controls don't help the matter as it usually feels like your running around in sewage water and the gun fights quickly turn into a nightmare as it becomes almost impossible to make out what is going on in some of them.
As Bryce is immortal the game offers up no challenge. So to rectify this you have dumb as nails AI partner that you need to protect. Essentially what this does is turn the entire game into one giant escort mission, and if there's any kind of mission that pisses me off more it's the escort mission. They are almost never fun and make the game worse. It's especially bad in "NeverDead" where your partner will run into the middle of a gun fight stand there like idiot and let the monster attack her until she's dead. There are many sections of the game where it would be easy to complete with out her, but with her there they become a frustrating slog where you just find your self asking "When will it be over?"
Konami isn't solely to blame for this atrocity as "Rebellion" is the developer. They aren't a horrible developer but they are no where near good. In the right hands maybe this could have been a good game but with the lack of both a good developer or a good publisher I'm just surprised it didn't turn out worse.
2. Amy
In many ways I feel bad picking on "Amy". It comes from a little developer in Europe with pretty much nothing to show other then "Amy" but if your going to release a game for the full downloadable price then I will treat you as I treat every other game purchase I make. And without a doubt "Amy" is one of the buggiest, ugliest most broken pieces of crap I have ever played.
Amy has been notorious for most of the year for being a broken unplayable mess with nothing good to come out of it, but lets start at something small, shall we? The Combat. Combat in survival horror (especially survival horror revolving around a average person) should be able to represent the inexperience that the main character has in fighting for their life. This type of combat has been seen many times in the Silent Hill series and many other titles. However crafting this type of combat requires a delicate touch as if you go to far in making the combat awkward and unwieldy you can easily slip into just having a broken combat system. But Amy doesn't even try to balance on this fence and thinks that the only way to make combat in a survival horror game scary is to make a broken system and tell the player to use it. Fighting something feels awkward and slow with little or no feeling to any of the impacts that should come off from your hits. What makes the combat worse is that you have to use it to protect the dumbest AI partner in gaming. She is beyond being a burden, constantly walking slow or walking into things that forces you to back track just to get her unstuck from a piece of debris. Like "NeverDead" "Amy" is basically a giant escort mission, only a thousand times worse due to the game even worse controls and AI.
But all of that seems like it would just make it another bad game, one that you would play and then put away, much like "NeverDead" but what truly makes this game worse is that it is straight up broken and unplayable. Bugs and glitches are everywhere in this game, some of which can actually cause the game to crash or freeze and others just can completely stop your game progression. One of the strangest I encountered was where the little girl Amy got stuck on a door. So I had to hustle all the way back to get her unstuck. However after becoming unstuck she then decided to start fazing through the game world until she disappeared. She never came back and I never heard anything from her. So I decided to keep going to see if the level could be completed with out her but no it can't so I had to start over. And this wouldn't be so bad if the save system or checkpoint system worked at all. But they don't and you will constantly be starting over from over an hour ago simply because the game broke on you. Plus the game seems to punish you for playing it your own way. If you do things out of sequence on some parts you will be punished for it later on in the game out of no where.
"Amy" is still one of the worst downloadable games I have ever played. It's an ugly, broken unplayable piece of crap that I will never ever get my money back on. That's probably the worst part is that I know it's just sitting there on my Xbox waiting for me to play it again, which I never will. "Amy" almost took the top spot on this list, but the difference between "Amy" and my number one is that I knew what I was getting when I bought "Amy", with my number one, I was lied too.
1. The WarZ
I am not a PC gamer. I have never really had the money to afford my own rig and keep it updated with memory cards and different rams and graphics cards or processors or Hard drives. So I only get to play PC games every now and then and make the occasional purchase on Steam if I can find a PC to play on. I had heard alot about the ARMA 2 mod "Day Z" where you run around a much more realistic world filled with Zombies. I had seen alot of play troughs that made it look really enjoyable. But since I didn't have much experience with Mods, I really didn't have much of a chance to play it. So I looked around for other games to try and I found "The WarZ". I had thought that with such a close title and pictures that made the it looks like "Day Z" on steroids that maybe the developers had been able to move on from the mod they created to make a full game based around the idea of "Day Z". But what I got was nothing short of a scam.
Lets forget the fact that this game is not made by the same developers as "Day Z" and is a quick cash in on it's popularity, quick cash ins pop up everywhere in today gaming market trying to capitalize on someone else's idea. Lets forget the fact that I was bullied and banned from the game for wanting a refund, and lets even forget the fact that the game was taken off of steam due to charges of false advertising. Even with all of that, if "The WarZ" was actually a good game I might be overlook those things (except the refund thing), but the bottom line on "The WarZ" is that it's just an awful boring game. The game is woefully boring with enemy's spread so far and so thin that I walked for 5 minuets in a straight line with out seeing any kind of enemy (other then a floating flashlight that decided to kill me). The guns have no feedback making you feeling like your firing a really powerful water gun.
The game is also extremely unfair and realies on the most awful and blatant pay to win service I have ever seen. Don't let this game fool you, it is no free to play. It's free to come in, look around, run out of bullets, die and then wait four hours until you can respawn again. And if you actually want to come back into the game before that you have to pay real money to be respawned. And that's not it, there is stuff that is essential to survival in the game such as food and water and ammo that you need but will have to pay as well to get. It cheats and pushes you into making more purchases by restricting the supplies you need, something the developers said wouldn't happen and they would not do.
"The WarZ" is a scam, plain and simple. It bullies and manipulates you into buying more and more to keep surviving. How this game even got released on Steam when many other much better games didn't baffles my mind. The only good thing to come out of my experience with "The WarZ" is getting my money back and seeing it taken off Steam for good. Fuck this game.
But of course the real meat to Mass Effect is in it's stories and characters that you meet. In ME3 alot of familiar faces show up in some capacity but they don't weigh down the cast with every single character you've met, this gives them time to make some new characters for you to meet but also to further flesh out one's that you have had a long standing relationship with. The new characters that they create are all very memorable and likable, even if some are a little bit bland (I'm looking at you James) but they are all interesting to talk to and get to know. The returning characters are still interesting and they becoming even more so when you have to accompany them on very important missions that are not only important to you but to them and their ideals.
The stories I created with these characters will stay in my mind just as long as the ending will to show the good side of the the bad. Mordin saving the day, Tali saying I love you as I take on a giant reaper, watching Legion bring peace to two peoples and seeing the pain on Liaras face as her home world falls to the reapers. These are characters I have come to deeply care about and I believe that any game that can make you care so much about imaginary characters through the interactivity of holding a controller has done something amazingly right.
4. Dishonored
I'm gonna admit something, I am not good at stealth games. I understand the concept behind them, that it's ultimately just as satisfying to sneak around letting no one know you were there in the first place as it is to run in and take out a base of 50 people with an assault rifle. I've tried to play many stealth games, many I love (Metal Gear Solid) and many I hate (Tenchu). So imagine my surprise when I picked up "Dishonored" that it wasn't forcing me to be stealthy, I just wanted to be stealthy.
One of the best things about "Dishonored" is the many varied ways that you can play it. Do you want to play it safe and easier and charge in with mystical powers in tow? or do you want to try the harder way and sneak around alerting no one to your presence Maybe you want to kill everyone you come across, maybe you will just knock them unconscious. Maybe you will actually assassinate your main target, or maybe you could just slander their name so bad that they are forced to run out of town. It's these kinds of choices and outcomes that really make the player feel engrossed in this world and makes you feel good about your actions in your own unique way.
The Atmosphere in the game is also quite incredible. The city of Dunwall is fully realized through the various conversations you overhear or the people. You feel the dirt and grime as you make your way through a shady part of the city, you almost feel relieved when you step into a large beautiful building. You can ultimately feel the pain these people go through and understand that this city is a city on the edge of destruction.
While I will fully admit that the story in "Dishonored" isn't the most memorable and the main character is anything but fleshed out, the game play is ultimately where "Dishonored" shines. Offering unique varied options that the player themselves makes and discovers is it's strongest quality and what truly makes it it's own game. Plus you can make swarms of rats eat people, and there's nothing wrong with that.
3. The Walking Dead
Talk about a game that came out of left field for me. I had fallen out with the TV show and the comics and had absolutely no interest in "The Walking Dead" for multiple reasons. Then I heard about this game, at first I was very pessimistic and ultimately brushed it off as a quick cash in on the TV show and the comics popularity. But then I noticed that Telltale was making the game. I had previously enjoyed their back to the future game and Sam and Max game, but then I also remembered their Jurassic Park game and feared the worst. Never the less I decided to purchased the first episode to see if anything good would come out of it. And after purchasing all 5 episodes later, I can safely say that "The Walking Dead" is one of the most emotional moving stories and character pieces I have seen in any medium.
"The Walking Dead" for me lives and breaths on two things, it's stories and it's characters. The story in this game is an incredible work of writing, creating many different characters but managing to inject them with life and humanity. Lee Everett is a character crafted by the player, he may have some sustainable traits put in by the developer, but the decisions he makes are ultimately left up to the player. It's you who is going to decide who out of 10 people gets the 4 pieces of food. You who decides who may live and who might die, will you help your friend out? Or abandon him to ensure your own survival? Yes the ending may always be the same but it's how you get to that ending and the story you crafted that really matters.
"The Walking Dead" also manages to create one of the best kid characters in the form of Clementine. Clementine is always with you in the game (except for the very beginning) but the thing is is that she never feels like a burden. You never feel burdened with her alongside you. She's very kind and polite, but will be forceful if she has to. She's small and weaker but she knows how to take care of herself and she's both funny and fun to be around without ever becoming annoying. I don't think I can remember another kid character that I actually wanted to be around more then Clementine since I first met Razputin in "Psychonauts".
"The Walking Dead" could have been even higher on this list if it had actually had more game play in it. The puzzles are easy to say the least and the actual game is basically just walking around looking for the next story bit or dialogue option. That said it's still high on this list for crafting one of the most well told stories in modern gaming and setting a new bar for adventure game stories.
2. Journey
Have you ever played a game where after your done with it you really don't know how to describe it? You know you liked it, but you don't know anything else. You don't know how to describe it or talk about it or even what the experience feels like. For me, that was "Journey".
It's hard for me to talk about "Journey" because I honestly have never played another game like it. I purchased "Journey" long after it had come out and every review I saw for it was very vague about what the actual game was like. So when the mid summer game drought came in, I decided to purchase "Journey" and see if I could understand what it was so many game journalists were floored by. By the end of the game I understood why so many people seemed vague on how the game played and felt, it was because each players journey was their own.
"Journey" is a game that wraps you up in its atmosphere and world. You feel the sun shining down on you as you make your way through the dessert. You feel the wind rushing through you as you surf down sand while the sun goes down in the distance, the gloomy eeriness in the underground or the freezing cold of the later parts of the game. It sucks you in and never lets you go, it's a game I played through in one sit and what was 2 hours of game play felt like 1.
But one of the most truly unique things about this game is it's engrossing and different co-op multiplayer. I myself am not a big fan of multiplayer for multiple reasons, but mostly I don't like the cooperation and interaction that one naturally has to give to participate with multiple people. But "Journey's" mutiplayer is wholly unique and it's own. There are no lobbies, no friends lists, no voice chat and not even a gamer tag on their character. You'll just be wandering the desert and out of nowhere you will see another hooded figure jumping around collecting symbols or scarf pieces. To play together all you have to do is stick together. That's it, and yet this leads to one of the most engrossing multiplayer experiences I've ever had. I think the image of our two characters trudging through the snow trying to keep our spirits up by trying to message each other will stay in my mind longer then some twelve year old yelling in my ear about how much I suck at Call of Duty.
"Journey" is simply one of those games that you have to play for yourself. To describe it to someone is meaningless as every journey is some one's own. But that experience is one that I will remember for a long time. "Journey" is simply a game unlike any other.
1. Far Cry 3
When it came down to the wire on which game I would choose as my game of the year, I was stuck between "Journey" and "Far Cry 3". One game was this unique beautiful game that defiys' description and the other is a dark twisted insane open island adventure filled with psychopaths, drugs and guns. But when it came right down to it, I had to ask myself one very important question. Which game let me blow up a Shark with an exploding arrow?
Yes I admit that in a list that has been up till now praising unique concepts and stories and varied game play ideals, to put a shooter at number one might sound downright insane. But honestly while I love all the games on this list, "Far Cry 3" is the game that I had the most fun playing this year. It's the game that keeps bringing me back over and over and over again to find and do other different things.
One of the best things about this game is it's environment This is one of the most fun sandboxes I've ever played around in. For one it's lush and beautiful, even when I play this on the Xbox it looks amazing. The sun shimmers, the nights are cold, the rain is harsh and it all adds into the immersion of the game world. There's something truly fun and frightening about stalking through the jungle in the rain with a bow and arrow when all of a sudden you get pounced on by a fierce angry tiger. Or while you scout an enemy position, out of no where a horde of Komodo Dragons will come into the enemy camp and wipe out all the enemy forces so that you can secure the outpost. It's these random chance encounters and various events that make the world truly feel alive and dangerous.
Now I will fully admit that while the characters of "Far Cry 3" are simply okay, like "The Walking Dead" one character truly stands out from the rest, and that's Vass. Vass is an amazing villain, at one moment he will be calm and collected and almost at the drop of a hat he will change into anger and backlash. He's a very charismatic character but he never gets too suave or sophisticated and always manages to stay on that fence between cool and collected and twisted and insane. One of my favorite parts of the game is Vass's insanity speech. It both perfectly encapsulates who Vass is and just how insane he is with out him actually realizing it. All of these things have made Vass one of my favorite villains in gaming, it just sucks he's only in half the game.
When it came down to "Far Cry 3" and "Journey" it really was a tough choice. I thought about why these games kept bringing me back over and over and over again. With "Journey" it was simple. It was the journey and how I made my journey my own. But with "Far Cry 3" many different thing kept bringing me back. The fully realized hunting and gathering system, Vass, the story, the island, the secrets, the places to discover. There is so much packed into "Far Cry 3" that I can't help but come back over and over again but each time I come back for one thing or another. Maybe this time I'm coming back for the story and the next time I'm coming back to hunt. All these factors is what makes "Far Cry 3" the funnest game I've played all year and what makes it my game of the year.
Well there certainly was alot of good games out this year but unfortunately there was also alot of crap.
The Worst
5. Resident Evil 6
You know what you get when you make a slightly less shitty version of "Resident Evil 5"? "Resident Evil 6". First I want to address something, "Resident Evil 6" has alot of really good things going in it's favor. The game looks great with high production values and and beautiful textures. The game also has great sound and huge replayability due to how many campaigns there are and the numerous ways to play it. However that doesn't stop the game from having such bad design choices go into it.
One of the biggest things that is wrong with "Resident Evil 6" is it's game play. The enhanced maneuvering and controls are good but the camera is so close to your character that often times you will be attacked from an enemy off screen and you can never make out what is attacking you and from where making combat both frustrating and annoying. One minuet you will be firing your gun at an enemy in front of you and when they get to close you will dodge roll back into a waiting horde of zombies. If you are not going to adjust other parts of the game to fit with your new character controls then you might as well not even bother changing the controls in the first place. The Coop is still pretty solid but the game doesn't take alot of opportunity's with it, just relegating it to "Help me up this ledge" "Help me open this door". At least in RE5 you could split up with one person taking a sniping position and the other taking on close quarters on the enemy. That felt cooperative and not just like 2 people are playing the same game with no variation for them to experiment with.
Another problem comes in the companion and enemy AI, It's incredibly inconsistent. At one point your partner will be incredibly smart and actually perform a flanking maneuver on the enemy and at other points they will leave you to die because they couldn't find the right place to pull you up on the ledge. It's certainly better then Sheva Aloderp from "Resident Evil 5" but that's only because they are able to point and shoot in the correct general direction. The enemy AI is also frequently in consistent. At one point they will be running into a wall and at other points you will have 3 regenerators all around you beating you sense less so that you have no time to actually get up and fight back.
There's alot more I could go into such as the the odd characterization on well established characters like Leon or the lack of characterization on characters who die, How the story seems to fade into the background or how like everyone I was yelling at the top of my voice "Fuck Chris's campaign". It's certainly better then "Resident Evil 5" but it's still held back by poor design choices and that it seems like it's confused as to what type of game it wants to be. Does it want to be a more action oriented game? A stealth game? A survival horror game? "Resident Evil 6" tries way to hard to please everyone and appeal to everyone and in the end it just doesn't please anyone.
4. 007 Legends
This one may be the most personal choice on this list. I am a big James Bond fan. I have seen all the movies, with my personal best and worst being "From Russia with Love" and "Die Another Day", and I have played many of the numerous games that Bonds name has been attached to over the years. From the very best (Goldeneye) to the worst (Goldeneye: Rouge Agent) I have played them all and I have wondered for years why the games industry seemed hesitant for to go back through Bonds history. There was a wealth of material that could be made into a at least semi decent Bond games with a little re-tweaking They had already tried to go and do this with the decent if not forgettable "From Russia with Love" game. So when I heard that for Bonds fiftieth anniversary Activision was going to be making a game that covered multiple Bond movies and significant moments from those movies I was ecstatic I should have known better because what I was nothing short of an insult to Bond fans.
Let's start with the story, or the lack of one. You play as bond, who is shot in the opening scene to "Skyfall" as you sink into the water you begin to reminisce about your career and remember key scenes and from other Bond movies. This sounds like a cool premise but the game mishandles it so badly. You are basically thrust into a scenario with little or no context as to what you are supposed to do, who anyone in this scene is or why we are even here. That's not much of a problem for me since I've seen the films but for others they will be completely lost and annoyed by the myriad of questions that will come up. "Why is there a naked gold woman laying on my bed?" "Why am I all of a sudden in a giant ice palace?" "Why am I in this ridiculous looking space suit on a space station near the moon?". This could easily be fixed with some sort of transition to the next scene, but there is no such things. Your just thrown into a new scenario, it's jarring to say the least. And like with all the Bond games Activision puts out now, all of the Bonds now have Daniel Craigs likeness. This wouldn't be so bad if the voice actor they hired for Bond was actually decent at acting. Most of the time he sounds wooden or bored and sound's nothing like Daniel Craig, it's so bad that you might as well be playing an entirely new Bond.
But as bad as the game muddles the story and the characters and the presentation, the biggest insult to me is the game play. The game may as well have been called "Call of 007". It feels almost copy and pasted from "Call of Duty" but feels infinitely worse. Now following "Call of Duty's " game play could work but there has to be enough original ideas in there to make it feel like it's own game. But it doesn't, it feels like a cheap knock off. Gun fights are confined to small confined areas (even when you are outside) and it treats you like an idiot with visionary cues that say "Follow" or "Chase". Worst off the game is boring as hell, forcing you to slog through missions filled with Brainless AI, meaningless shootouts and weapons that have no feeling or kick to them, you may as well be shooting BB pellets at them.
There is so much more wrong with this game, from the running time being only about 8 hours or the moronic AI or the bland multiplayer, but it can all be summed up like this. Activision doesn't care about James Bond. Why should it? It already has a triple A flagship game under it's belt that makes them millions every year so why put any effort into making another stand out franchise? This game is the nail in the coffin of James Bond license games from Activision. It's time for their License to be revoked and given to someone who might actually give a crap.
3. NeverDead
Oh Konami, what happened to you? You were once one of the biggest and best gaming companies that existed. Bringing us classics like Contra, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevainia, Zone of the Enders and Silent Hill. Now look at you. You managed to botch every single release you had this year. There was of course the sequel to "X blades" that came out called "Blades of Time" that you didn't even bother marketing so that no one even knew it came out. There was your re release of "Zone of the Enders " which had the combat slowed down and the frame rate drop significantly from the original. You released the MGSHD collection before releasing the MGS3 3DS port making the 3DS game pretty much needless for anyone who had already picked up the HD collection. And of course there's all the Silent Hill games you managed to screw up. Downpour was rushed out the gate, you delayed Book of Memories 3 times days before the release date and the HD collection I'm not even going to talk about. If I could cheat a little bit I think I would put all of Konami on this list, but instead I'll just put their only original release on here, because with "NeverDead" it looks like they are barely even trying to make anything new anymore.
The worst type of game in my opinion is the game that has good ideas and piss poor execution. "NeverDead" is such a game. It brings alot of interesting unique things to the table but completely falls flat on it's face when ever it tries to integrate them into the game. For instance the main character Bryce is immortal which means that he can't die. There fore his limbs, torso and head can be knocked away and you are able to move around piecing your self back together. This sounds like an interesting idea in theory but developer Rebellion never changes it up, so after the fifth time that you roll your head around looking for your arms and legs it starts to become tedious. The ability to throw your hand across the room and shoot a gun sounds cool but actually pulling it off reveals that it's largely useless as it barely hits anything. The controls don't help the matter as it usually feels like your running around in sewage water and the gun fights quickly turn into a nightmare as it becomes almost impossible to make out what is going on in some of them.
As Bryce is immortal the game offers up no challenge. So to rectify this you have dumb as nails AI partner that you need to protect. Essentially what this does is turn the entire game into one giant escort mission, and if there's any kind of mission that pisses me off more it's the escort mission. They are almost never fun and make the game worse. It's especially bad in "NeverDead" where your partner will run into the middle of a gun fight stand there like idiot and let the monster attack her until she's dead. There are many sections of the game where it would be easy to complete with out her, but with her there they become a frustrating slog where you just find your self asking "When will it be over?"
Konami isn't solely to blame for this atrocity as "Rebellion" is the developer. They aren't a horrible developer but they are no where near good. In the right hands maybe this could have been a good game but with the lack of both a good developer or a good publisher I'm just surprised it didn't turn out worse.
2. Amy
In many ways I feel bad picking on "Amy". It comes from a little developer in Europe with pretty much nothing to show other then "Amy" but if your going to release a game for the full downloadable price then I will treat you as I treat every other game purchase I make. And without a doubt "Amy" is one of the buggiest, ugliest most broken pieces of crap I have ever played.
Amy has been notorious for most of the year for being a broken unplayable mess with nothing good to come out of it, but lets start at something small, shall we? The Combat. Combat in survival horror (especially survival horror revolving around a average person) should be able to represent the inexperience that the main character has in fighting for their life. This type of combat has been seen many times in the Silent Hill series and many other titles. However crafting this type of combat requires a delicate touch as if you go to far in making the combat awkward and unwieldy you can easily slip into just having a broken combat system. But Amy doesn't even try to balance on this fence and thinks that the only way to make combat in a survival horror game scary is to make a broken system and tell the player to use it. Fighting something feels awkward and slow with little or no feeling to any of the impacts that should come off from your hits. What makes the combat worse is that you have to use it to protect the dumbest AI partner in gaming. She is beyond being a burden, constantly walking slow or walking into things that forces you to back track just to get her unstuck from a piece of debris. Like "NeverDead" "Amy" is basically a giant escort mission, only a thousand times worse due to the game even worse controls and AI.
But all of that seems like it would just make it another bad game, one that you would play and then put away, much like "NeverDead" but what truly makes this game worse is that it is straight up broken and unplayable. Bugs and glitches are everywhere in this game, some of which can actually cause the game to crash or freeze and others just can completely stop your game progression. One of the strangest I encountered was where the little girl Amy got stuck on a door. So I had to hustle all the way back to get her unstuck. However after becoming unstuck she then decided to start fazing through the game world until she disappeared. She never came back and I never heard anything from her. So I decided to keep going to see if the level could be completed with out her but no it can't so I had to start over. And this wouldn't be so bad if the save system or checkpoint system worked at all. But they don't and you will constantly be starting over from over an hour ago simply because the game broke on you. Plus the game seems to punish you for playing it your own way. If you do things out of sequence on some parts you will be punished for it later on in the game out of no where.
"Amy" is still one of the worst downloadable games I have ever played. It's an ugly, broken unplayable piece of crap that I will never ever get my money back on. That's probably the worst part is that I know it's just sitting there on my Xbox waiting for me to play it again, which I never will. "Amy" almost took the top spot on this list, but the difference between "Amy" and my number one is that I knew what I was getting when I bought "Amy", with my number one, I was lied too.
1. The WarZ
I am not a PC gamer. I have never really had the money to afford my own rig and keep it updated with memory cards and different rams and graphics cards or processors or Hard drives. So I only get to play PC games every now and then and make the occasional purchase on Steam if I can find a PC to play on. I had heard alot about the ARMA 2 mod "Day Z" where you run around a much more realistic world filled with Zombies. I had seen alot of play troughs that made it look really enjoyable. But since I didn't have much experience with Mods, I really didn't have much of a chance to play it. So I looked around for other games to try and I found "The WarZ". I had thought that with such a close title and pictures that made the it looks like "Day Z" on steroids that maybe the developers had been able to move on from the mod they created to make a full game based around the idea of "Day Z". But what I got was nothing short of a scam.
Lets forget the fact that this game is not made by the same developers as "Day Z" and is a quick cash in on it's popularity, quick cash ins pop up everywhere in today gaming market trying to capitalize on someone else's idea. Lets forget the fact that I was bullied and banned from the game for wanting a refund, and lets even forget the fact that the game was taken off of steam due to charges of false advertising. Even with all of that, if "The WarZ" was actually a good game I might be overlook those things (except the refund thing), but the bottom line on "The WarZ" is that it's just an awful boring game. The game is woefully boring with enemy's spread so far and so thin that I walked for 5 minuets in a straight line with out seeing any kind of enemy (other then a floating flashlight that decided to kill me). The guns have no feedback making you feeling like your firing a really powerful water gun.
The game is also extremely unfair and realies on the most awful and blatant pay to win service I have ever seen. Don't let this game fool you, it is no free to play. It's free to come in, look around, run out of bullets, die and then wait four hours until you can respawn again. And if you actually want to come back into the game before that you have to pay real money to be respawned. And that's not it, there is stuff that is essential to survival in the game such as food and water and ammo that you need but will have to pay as well to get. It cheats and pushes you into making more purchases by restricting the supplies you need, something the developers said wouldn't happen and they would not do.
"The WarZ" is a scam, plain and simple. It bullies and manipulates you into buying more and more to keep surviving. How this game even got released on Steam when many other much better games didn't baffles my mind. The only good thing to come out of my experience with "The WarZ" is getting my money back and seeing it taken off Steam for good. Fuck this game.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for putting Journey on the list. I never watch someone play video games (unless I'm waiting for a turn). However, I caught my friend playing journey, and I couldn't look away. Anything that can pull off an emotionally involving story without a single word is worthy of praise, and I think you are the first person I've seen put this on a top list.
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