Year In Review:
This year has been a relatively disappointing year for
gaming, especially when compared to 2011 which contained such masterpieces as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Portal 2 and Dark Souls, all three of which may just be the three best games I
have ever played. But let’s not get
crazy.
2012 started off poorly with games like NeverDead and Resident Evil:
Operation Raccoon City, and even Mass
Effect 3 had flaws that were
impossible to ignore. But eventually we got great titles like Halo 4, Dishonored and Borderlands 2,
and even others I missed such as XCOM:
Enemy Unknown, Journey, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Far Cry 3 look great and I will probably
get around to most of them soon enough.
When I think about this year of gaming, the phrase “Year Of Crummy
Endings” comes to mind, and no, I’m not just talking about Mass Effect 3…but I will soon.
·
Darksiders 2 and Assassin’s Creed III’s endings were both depressingly vague,
and I’m still not even sure if the
main characters are even alive.
·
NeverDead,
Borderlands
2 and Inversion all had long, boring and repetitive final bosses,
with Borderlands 2 being the only one
I bothered to defeat.
· Spec Ops: The Line had a climax that seemed a little too serious for its
own good, and all I thought was; this guy doesn’t need to go crazy, he just
needs to go home, have a shower and take a nap.
·
Halo 4’s
‘end stage’ was a tedious gauntlet of enemies resulting in the pseudo-villain trying
and failing to kill you.
· Pokémon White 2’s ending is almost impossible to remember.
· Pokémon Conquest’s final boss wasn’t necessarily annoying, but the fact the villain had both Zekrom and a shiny Rayquaza is
ludicrous.
· Mass Effect 3’s ending was just weird. I LOVED the sense of finality it had, but it felt so rushed, unexplained
and too simple.
Nothing has caught my interest in 2013, except Lost Planet 3, but hopefully we’ll see
some new and original ideas spring forth this year. Anyway, time for my personal best and worst
games of last year.
Top 5 Best Games Of 2012
5. Dishonored
I’m surprised I don’t utterly despise this
game. I’m not much of a stealth
enthusiast, it looks and plays a lot like BioShock
and Might and Magic: Dark Messiah
Elements, two games I hate, and the latter was actually a game Arkane
Studios worked on. But Dishonored is a very solid gaming experience,
with masterfully balanced stealth and combat, with dynamic powers that make the
game an overall joy to play.
My main complaint, and why it it’s
only number five, is that the enemies are pitifully inept at noticing your
presence. There was a moment when I was
in an apartment building, standing near the doorway of a room with two guards
inside. Just as a test, I got out my
knife and smashed the glass of a nearby cabinet, without the guards, located about 15 feet away from me, noticing. Idiots.
4. Halo 4
Like Dishonored, Halo 4 is
just a generally fun game to play.
Even though Bungie isn’t driving
the series now, it really does feel
like a Halo game. The scenery is beautiful, with lovely open
maps, and your ammo is surprisingly limited, resulting in you switching between
varied weapons during missions or even single battles. There isn’t much else to say about Halo 4 except what I said on the Game
Out Loud podcast (that nobody can hear because the audio got corrupted apparently): I recommend it to anyone who wants a fun and
colourful shooter for the weekend.
3. Mass Effect 3
Mass Effect
3 is one of four games this year that I actually played again after
reviewing it, and it’s the only one
I actually finished twice in the same year.
I really needed a second go to see
how much detail and love has gone into ME3,
as well as the series as a whole.
Characters you probably forgot about are referenced here and even show
up, with Thane and Mordin’s appearances, and inevitable disappearances, being
more heart wrenching than I ever could have imagined.
The combat is arguably the best
it’s ever been, although I found my Warp and Throw Powers 10 times more useful
than using weapons, so combat became a little too ‘magical’ for my liking. Yet the guns and Powers are dynamic and
display excellent graphical animation and force, with the downright flawless
sound design wrapping the game play together into one beautiful package.
However, there definitely was a lot
of failed potential when it came to the idea of The Reapers, with the only display of an appropriately
Armageddon-y scenario appearing at the tail end of the entire damn game.
The Reapers were supposed to fall onto planets like gargantuan rain
drops and shoot out putrid black smoke like Sovereign’s first appearance in the
first Mass Effect. Instead, you only see what feels like four
actual reapers (The smaller ones you fight on Tuchanka and Rannoch don’t count
for obvious reasons), and they don’t seem to be doing anything except stepping
around the place and randomly shooting ships, buildings and even vacant pieces
of ground with their lasers of conveniently varying power.
But, it’s impossible to disregard
the quality shown in Mass Effect 3,
and is easily placed on my list of best games this year.
2. Spec Ops: The Line
At the very least, Spec Ops: The Line is a very functional
and engaging cover shooter that cleverly utilizes team members allowing you to
tactically kill enemies in relatively varied and intense situations.
At the very most, Spec Ops: The Line is a disturbing and
provocative look at the idea of murder and the effects war has on somebody. When compared to a game like Mass Effect 3, Spec Ops: The Line is fairly standard as far as character
development and story goes, but the player experiences the story so gracefully
that it makes many other shooters look downright boring.
1. Borderlands 2
Where do I begin?
The landscapes are gorgeous and
massive, with surprisingly different locations such as an icy tundra, an underground
mine, desert, city (I guess) and bandit fortresses. It makes the prequel look like a grain of
sand, and even though the area is a little too ‘set out’ to feel truly alive, Pandora sure is a fun place to
blow stuff up in.
The combat is explosively engaging,
and the guns are crazy as hell, though the flawed Fight For Your Life mechanic
means you’ll often resort to brandishing a shotgun and crudely throwing
yourself into a cluster of enemies no matter what class you chose.
I’ve probably played Borderlands 2
for at least 60 hours now and it still feels massive and creative, among other
things, and has everything that made all the other games on this list great. The game play flows as well as Dishonored and Halo 4, and the almost uncomfortably good story definitely gives Spec Ops: The Line and Mass Effect 3 a run for their money. Crap final boss though.
Top 5 Worst Games Of 2012
5. Inversion
Inversion certainly
has its perks. There are several moments
where the gravity idea is pulled off very well, with some awesome looking
visuals, and the plot twist, if you can call it that, is surprisingly
interesting and has a huge amount of potential.
Sadly, the rest is just a standard
shooter in virtually every way. Even
fighting enemies while in zero gravity lacks the freedom it should have and
feels far too linear, like pulling yourself along the lane ropes in a public
swimming pool instead of swimming around in the water. That may just be the best analogy ever.
The bosses are the only thing
stopping Inversion from just being standard. They all have monstrous amounts of health and
are an overall pain to encounter, making Inversion
the 2nd most infuriating game I played this year.
4. NeverDead
It’s actually quite hard for me to
hate NeverDead, and it’s not just
because of the awesome soundtrack. NeverDead was the first game I reviewed
on Bag Of Games, terribly mind you. I
think I actually took up about ¼ of the page just to list two things I liked, man, why did I do that? Anyway…
The combat is repetitive, not
helped by constantly re-spawning enemies, and Bryce constantly splitting apart
like a piñata. Enemies are all generically
demonic, though some creature
designs are pretty cool, and playing through the game is just generally dull.
Like Inversion, there was loads of potential here, with Bryce starting
to grow on me a little, but there just wasn’t enough ‘juice’ for me to get
invested here.
3. AVSEQ
I had oddly high expectations for
AVSEQ. A colourful and simplistic casual
game with no sense of story or context?
Move over Tetris! But, no. There really isn’t anything good about this
game. It’s just clicking a circle of a
certain colour and then clicking another
circle of the same colour.
AVSEQ has as
much excitement as dusting some dirt of your shoe, and isn’t worth anybody’s
time. Stick to Tetris.
2. Resident Evil: Operation
Raccoon City
RE: ORC contains
every flaw 3, 4 and 5 has all in one experience.
The story is vague and the overall experience
is ‘hypnotising-ly’ boring, involving characters with virtually non-existent
personalities and most enemies being boring soldiers and zombies. Some enemies take huge amounts of damage to
take down, most notably a big mutant guy with a machine gun that you need to
shoot to death, despite me using literally
every gun and grenade in the room on him without him giving off any animation
to let me know I was even supposed to be attacking him at all.
RE: ORC is flawed
is pretty much every way, right down to something as simple as gun power and
ammunition. Definitely give it a miss.
1. Dragon’s Dogma
Dragon’s Dogma is more
than just bad. It’s wrong. Wrong for gaming and wrong for fantasy in
general. Levelling up, choosing a class,
customizing your character, exploring the land, the story and even the tactics
of defeating enemies feel hollow and lack any semblance of creativity.
Your character, and every other
character now that I think about it, is totally vacuous, and everything about Dragon’s Dogma lacks energy, especially the idea of Pawns which
just comes off as a way of having party members without going to the lengths of
giving them a personality. Game
play is beyond repetitive, with multiple fireballs and lightning strikes
failing to take down a single bandit, and my “teammates” battle cries have
nearly driven me insane.
I honestly could come up with
dozens, if not hundreds of flaws Dragon’s
Dogma has, but I’m getting really depressed now, so I’ll just end it
here. Oh, the lip synching sucks too.
Well, that’s 2012 done. Thanks to those who stuck around and to
anyone who bothered to read all of this instead of just seeing what I listed as
my best and worst games of the year before closing the window. I’ll be back this year with more…whatever it
is I do. (EDIT 07/10/2013: Don't hold your breath)
