2012: Quietly turning into a fantastic year

[DustyDrB]

At the outset of the year, I was feeling like it was going to be a weak one. I was dubbing it "The Year of the Backlog", figuring that I'd finally just whittle down my huge list of games left unplayed. There was going to be Mass Effect 3...and that was all I really cared about.

But then that suddenly changed around late summer and into the fall with a slew of games: Darksiders 2, Sleeping Dogs, FTL, Mark of the Ninja, Torchlight 2, Endless Space, Tribes: Ascend (released early in the year, but I'm only now getting into it), and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Are there is more coming (The Banner Saga, Natural Selection 2, and Hawken are three that I'm particularly looking forward to). By the year's end, there will probably be nearly double the amount of games I've played and loved than there were last year. It's nice to be surprised sometimes.

So has 2012 been a surprisingly good year for you as well? Which one surprised you the most? Or perhaps a top three. Whatever you feel like. This is a happy thread.

My biggest surprise:
Sleeping Dogs. It's caught me so off-guard mainly because I have been hopelessly burnt out on city-based sandbox games for a long time. The previous four that I tried (The Saboteur, Mafia II, GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Saint's Row 2) I ended up giving up on out of boredom. Somehow, Sleeping Dogs held my interest the whole way through. The driving was nice and arcadey. The combat was a ton of fun (sort of an Arkham Asylum lite). The city was vibrant. And the story was pretty good.

Top three for the year:
1. Mass Effect 3 (still love it, despite the glaring and infuriating issues)
2. Torchlight 2
3. Sleeping Dogs

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Top three, in no particular order:

1. GW2
2. XCOM
3. FTL

Acronyms for the win!

 

[Pink Gregory]

God FTL is awesome.

That could win the year alone.

But yes, I agree.

 

[WoW Killer]

Probably:

1. Borderlands 2
2. Guild Wars 2
3. Diablo 3 (no, I'm serious)

Still waiting to play Dishonored and X-COM, which I imagine would be contenders for me. I only played the demo for Torchlight 2, which seemed surprisingly mediocre; I'll still pick it up at some point though. Tribes: Ascend gets an honourable mention, because I'm not a fan of first person shooters at all, and I actually enjoyed that game a lot.

 

[DustyDrB]

Tribes: Ascend gets an honourable mention, because I'm not a fan of first person shooters at all, and I actually enjoyed that game a lot.

Tribes is made for me. I love being mobile, just running around gleefully. As a result, I'm constantly in this fun close-encounter fights and almost never get sniped off from a distance. Sadly, I've found communication and teamplay to be lacking. So TF2 is still far and away my main fix for a multiplayer FPS. Though it could just be that I haven't found the right group in Tribes, as opposed to how I normally play TF2 on our servers with members of my clan.

 

[MajorTomServo]

Being an unemployed full time student, I haven't had much time or money for games this year. I've mostly been working through my 'to play' stack. This is pretty much where I'm at right now:

Spoiler

I redboxed Dishonored the other day, that's pretty good!

 

[Zeckt]

oooh Heres mine

1. Guild wars 2
2. Max Payne 3. It was like Uncharted 3 but with none of the sucking!
3. FF13-2. Sorry!

 

[The Madman]

There have been a lot of great games released lately, but even so my favourite so far has still probably got to go to Crusader Kings 2, which has probably turned into one of my favourite strategy games not only in recent years but, well, ever. It's just such a fantastic take on grand strategy driven not by numbers or statistics but instead by personal relationships, plotting, backstabbing, and personalities. That it also includes the strategic elements of armies and conquest is just the icing on the cake.

Crusader Kings 2, my game of the year almost without doubt.

Beyond that there's also Dishonored and XCOM, two games from ye-olden style genre I'd thought were all but dead in modern AAA development. That they're both damned good is also amazing. Seriously, they're both great and I really hope they do well sales wise because I'd love nothing more for gaming than to see a resurgence in these style of games.

So I guess if we're going to number everything...

1. Crusader Kings 2
2. Dishonored
3. XCOM: Enemy Unknown

And then there's also Torchlight 2, which is by far my favourite action rpg of that sort in years. Great little game!

 

[ShadowsofHope]

1. Dishonored

2. Guild Wars 2

3. Mass Effect 3 (My headcanon ending over Star-Brat's)

Halo 4 is in reserve on this list, and from the looks of it so far, it might just compete with Dishonored for top spot..

 

[Shoggoth2588]

2012 seems like its a better year than I was originally going to give it credit for. Outside of the 3DS I don't really have a lot of experience though...I'm loving Silent Hill Downpour but that's really the only 2012 game I've been able to play. My GF has Guild Wars 2 so I'll be able to play that in a few weeks or hopefully before the year is out. Other than that, my list of 2012 games that I should probably have include...

Dishonored
Dragon's Dogma
Kingdoms of Amalur
Mass Effect 3 (waiting for the Wii-U version)
Max Payne 3
Sleeping Dogs
XCom

...and pretty much anything coming out on the Wii-U. I feel like there was going to be more than that. Maybe it wasn't that great of a year...I remember being disappointed by Dream Drop Distance for example but Theatrhythym is my all-time favorite 3DS game (and a FF game that I'm spent nearly 100 hours on which is damn near unprecedented).

 

[RedDeadFred]

Ya 2012 is turning out to be pretty great.

I haven't been able to spend too much money on games this year but here are my top 3 so far:

1. Borderlands 2
2. Mass Effect 3
3. The Witcher 2 (I bought it on 360 so this counts as this year)

 

[Ryotknife]

other than borderlands 2, nothing else has really gotten me excited this year.

So yea, the year of the backlog for me

 

[schtingah]

For me:

1. Mass Effect 3
2. The Walking Dead
3. The Secret World

Honourable Mentions: Dear Esther, Dishonored, Civ V: Gods & Kings, XCOM, FTL

 

[shrekfan246]

I was actually pleasantly surprised by Sleeping Dogs too. The world was certainly able to keep me a lot more interested than any of the Grand Theft Auto games.

Other than that... hm... well, Dark Souls on the PC with the DSFix mod is really pretty damn good (though I still refuse to not use a controller for it).

Dishonored will probably beat out Mass Effect 3 for my personal game of the year. Actually, scratch that, Dishonored will probably tie with Journey for my personal game of the year.

Then Darksiders II, Borderlands 2, the aforementioned Mass Effect 3, the English localized Ys Origin and Ys The Oath in Felghana, The Darkness II, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and Torchlight II were all really good games, and there's a bunch of PS Vita games I'm looking forward to getting around the 30th of this month, not to mention Assassin's Creed III, Halo 4, Okami HD, and possibly Epic Mickey 2 since it's not Wii-exclusive.

As well, I've also just recently gotten into League of Legends (not a recent game) and Super Monday Night Combat (is a recent game).

 

[Gearhead mk2]

At the start of the year, it seemed like apart from a few big titles, it was gonna be an OK year. Some good stuff, but nothing that'll really matter in the long run. But then...

Let it be said that 2012 was the year that one of the few and far-between games that we can classify as "art games" came out. Spec Ops: The Line is up there with the likes of Bastion, Journey, and Shadow of the Colussus. It is a product very much of this time, and perhaps when the whole "modern war" thing has finally (and deservedly) died it'll have lost some of it's sting, but if people are actually willing to judge, critique, and debate about games as an art form, then people will be talking about The Line for a long time.

 

[The White Hunter]

My games of the year:

1: TF2... Yeah, still the best, especially with all the new stuph!
2: Dishonored. The best stealth'em'up since Thief 2. Stay away with the bore that is AssCreed or Deus Ex: HR, Dishonored is just so much plain fun with such tight controls and amzing leveldesign... It is just amazing.
3: Pokemon White 2. With hardmode on: SO FUNNNNNNNNNNNNN

XCom sadly never reached place 3, the game is so full of bugs and bad design choices... *sigh* So much potential.

I wish I had the time to get sucked into White 2 D: I'm only just at the Castelia Sewers with a Whirlipede and a Flaafy. Want me a Trapinch and a Cottonee....

Top 3 for the year..

1)Pokemon White 2
2)Sleeping Dogs
3)Borderlands 2

Honestly this has been a year of backlog and retro for me mostly, there's not been a hell of a lot I've wanted to play. I had some time to get back into competitive pokemon battling though at least.

 

[The White Hunter]

At the start of the year, it seemed like apart from a few big titles, it was gonna be an OK year. Some good stuff, but nothing that'll really matter in the long run. But then...

Let it be said that 2012 was the year that one of the few and far-between games that we can classify as "art games" came out. Spec Ops: The Line is up there with the likes of Bastion, Journey, and Shadow of the Colussus. It is a product very much of this time, and perhaps when the whole "modern war" thing has finally (and deservedly) died it'll have lost some of it's sting, but if people are actually willing to judge, critique, and debate about games as an art form, then people will be talking about The Line for a long time.

I got that game for my birthday last week, it is now sitting on my "To Play" pile, about 2 games down below the new pokemon and skies of arcadia. I've got about 20 minutes in but I'm really excited to get to it!