Cast Your Vote For The Escapist's Game of the Year 2012

[lechat]

damn it looks like a pretty piss year when i look at it now and since i am a PC (and LOL wii) only gamer my choices are limited.
on one hand i want to go with walking dead because it was an amazing "experience" and written better than any other game ive ever played but on the other hand when you step back and look at it all it really is is an awesome series of cutscenes strung together by a shit load of QTEs which noone really wants in games making it essentially worse than the average hentai game cause at least those have tentacles and are designed so you can play one handed

guess that leaves me with dishonored and borderlands

dishonored was great but i hated being near enough forced to play the game without killing anyone and i still thought hitman might have been more solidly built.... and what skullfukery is this where is hitman on the list?

borderlands 2 was an absolute blast to play but i always got a sense of impending dread whenever i opened a door knowing there was gonna be 50 containers in the room each containing 1 or 2 bucks except one which might have a gun 1% better than the one i currently had that i could use for 5 minuets before throwing away

goes i have to pick walking dead cause tentacles and shit gameplay aside it is the only thing i see on the list that has raised the bar of gaming this year

 

[CoL0sS]

Damn it, I've yet to play Spec Ops: The Line and Journey. Funny enough, game I've had most fun with this year (Darkness II) isn't even on the list, so I'll have tough time choosing between The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3 and Guild Wars 2.

 

[Spydercake]

Persona 4 Golden for me.

The Vita is such a small team >_>

High five! *puts hand up in the air*
So many good choices, but when it comes down to it, Persona 4 Golden is the one that I got the most high quality entertainment out of. Nearing 100 hours on my new game+
Spec ops for my second, and FTL for my third.

 

[Godhead]

There is a distinct lack of Chivalry from these choices. So I went ahead and went with the most brutal option I saw: Heart of Darkness.

 

[Zburator]

Persona 4 Golden for me.

The Vita is such a small team >_>

High five! *puts hand up in the air*
So many good choices, but when it comes down to it, Persona 4 Golden is the one that I got the most high quality entertainment out of. Nearing 100 hours on my new game+
Spec ops for my second, and FTL for my third.

YEAH! *High fives*

 

[purf]

I'm in full Pragmatism mode here. Despite its flaws on multiple levels, the game that I apparently have enjoyed the most, given the hours I've put into it, is easily Guild Wars 2.

 

[comet5002]

I voted for Persona 4 just because I'm pretty sure no one else on this entire site is going to.

Also I freaking love that game, and with the exception of The Walking Dead, have not played any other games on that list, as I am a poor college student with no job.

But to make this post serious, yeah, I really love Persona 4 and haven't played the other games, so that's why it's getting my vote.

 

[shintakie10]

It was basically a match between The Walking Dead and Spec Ops: The Line for me.

Both games had amazin emotional impact for me (much much different emotions) to the point that I actually talked about how a game made me feel. Not how a game made me angry because it was stupid hard or how a game was fun because I blew up stuff. It made me talk about how certain events in a game actually effected me emotionally beyond the simple "yay blow stuff up/stab zombies."

Were they the most amazin games gameplay wise? Ehhh...no. The Walking Dead was a slightly upgraded version of a Visual Novel and Spec Ops most definitely did not have the tightest gunplay I've seen in a game (far from the worst though), however I feel they both definitely deserve awards for showin how important a story can actually be.

In the end I went Walking Dead though if only because Spec Ops got super frustratin to me at points because I kept dyin to really really stupid shit.

Edit -

I feel pretty safe in sayin that this is most definitely goin to be a race between Journey, Spec Ops, The Walking Dead, and Dishonored. Not that the other games aren't amazin? Far from it. I've played Mists of Pandaria more than any other game this year, hell more than most other games combined at this point. I still play D3 continually and enjoy it a lot. FTL was probably my favorite indie game released this year despite how completely terrible I am at it.

However, just based off of how much those 4 titles have been discussed in a positive light this year I'd be amazed if one of them didn't win GoTY.

About the only one I'd say has a chance that isn't part of that list is Farcry 3 and most of that I'd attribute to the shiny new syndrome.

 

[Mark Elders]

I'm hating all the comments that say, "I've only played the one, so I voted for it."

As for me, who has played a bunch of these, I'm saying Spec Ops: The Line because half an hour after I finished it, I was still shaking from the shear weight of what I'd done. Afterwards, I tried to pick up Red Dead Redemption and couldn't get into it because I kept trying to lasso everyone rather than shoot them. And I don't think I could ever play Uncharted again; the protagonist even has the same voice actor.

 

[Denizen]

No natural selection 2, no vote.

 

[Austin Manning]

Mainly the gameplay. While I can admit the game does a few interesting things story-wise, I feel the experience as a whole is dragged way down because of it's tedious boring cover shooting we've all seen a hundred times.

Personally I think the gameplay was fine, but I can see how it might be tedious to someone who plays a lot of cover based shooters. But if they made the gameplay super fun and exiting it would have gone against the point the game was trying to make that real war isn't the virtual paintball match that Call of Duty and Battlefield present us with. While you could argue that the gameplay should still be fun, doing so here would be like making Kratos the protagonist of a Silent Hill title. Sure it would make the gameplay more enjoyable, but it would undermine and ruin the overall experience (you're not supposed to have fun committing war crimes).

As for pacing, I feel as if the game treats you like you'll turn off the game if there isn't explosions and shooting every five minutes on the dot. Every time the game slows down and begins to develop, boom, long cover shooting section.

While I would have to play the game again to argue this point completely, I think the game handled it's pacing pretty well, or (to break out an old cliche) at least better than most titles where the only time you don't shoot is in a loading screen. It started with a big action scene to grab us, and then pulled back to introduce us to the characters and their goals. While there is plenty of action, it would slow down and develop the characters, letting us know what they thought about their mission, surroundings and situation, while also varying up the gameplay so that it never became "go into cover, shoot enemies with rifle until they stop coming, advance, repeat". All of this built to an intense climax involving both heavy action and heavy introspection on the part of the main character and player.

I'm supposed to feel bad for these guys who are going through the hardships of war when every five minutes they're killing hundreds of faceless nameless mooks? It just doesn't work for me.

The game leaves it up to you to decide whether the main characters are deserving of sympathy or not. Personally I think everyone in the game is worthy of at least some sympathy or empathy as everyone is trying to do the right thing. As douche as the CIA team is, they are trying to prevent a war in which millions more people would die; as horrible as the Damned 33rd are, they came to Dubai to try and save the survivors; and as evil as the Delta force was, all they wanted was to rescue the people. The citizens of Dubai are the most deserving for obvious reasons. To be fair I still hate everyone above for the consequences of their actions (with the exception of the civilians) but I can understand why they did what they did.

Also, and I'm surprised you didn't clue into this, the game's second last choice comes when you meet Konrad and that is when you, as the player, can pass judgment on Walker (and some small part of yourself) for the actions he committed over the course of the game.

 

[Tiswas]

Xenoblade Chronicles! Oh wait....

Darksiders 2! Goddamit....

How about Nintendoland, had hours of fun with tha.....for christ sake.

Guess I'm forced to go with Journey. I have Persona 4 but not played it yet so cannot comment. Most of the others on the list are tired old franchises that should have been stopped a few games back (Ass Creed, Halo, COD)