What Game Surprised You This Year?

[Bvenged]

My most surprising game this year, just for pure entertainment value & innovation within its genre, is From Dust. Outstanding. Truly worth the £10 it is with incredible replay value.

Spoiler: Personal Review

Initially I expected it to be just your average 1200M$P arcade game which you complete once, float around the leaderboards (4th in the world on 1 challenge ) then off it from your HDD without a second glance despite a looming feeling of wasted money. But no, it is 100% worth every penny on Xbox and I just wish it were longer with a build-your-own challenges mode. Campaign was about 10 hours casually, more if you drag it out. Challenges are excellently challenging, not too hard, not too easy - good difficulty curve; and if you fancy mucking around on your favourite campagin level after completion, go right ahead - nothings stopping you. Also, somehow they managed to incorporate entertaining collectibles into a GOD GAME. Marvellous.
Come on Ubisoft, make the expansion / FD2 already!

Now, I would've said GoW3 or Skyrim, but both are not nearly innovative enough. While Skyrim is my life right now it was nothing to From Dust.

Oh and my other most surprising game was *drum roll please* Call of duty: Modern Warfare 3!

I assumed it would be pretty shit, mostly copy-and-pasted and nowhere near worth £45, but as with all CoDs I would complete its short campaign of 6 hours & 1000G it...

While my prophesy holds true for the most part; I completed the game first time, following the story slowly, in Hardened, in 4 hours & 30 minutes [+- 10 mins].
This is the first CoD I will not get 1000G in as it is just not entertaining enough no matter how hard I try to make it so. It is a bollocks game more bollocks than I could ever have predicted. It's been done before, and before that, and before that... so why do it AGAIN? I'd go insane and be sectioned before I play CoD online under Activision again. Or even purchase it again for that matter. Honestly, if they're not going to change it at all at least give the devs some time to fucking patch the thing before release! It's so fucking scripted and basic online all they need is a little more time. Stick the fucking thing in a warehouse for an extra year or 2 and THEN I might buy it without hospitalisation, as I could at least look at it as a renewal of itself.[footnote]Luckily I didn't buy this one, my brother did, so I'm holding strong against the shit-storm that is CoD, but it's Skyrim & Halo I can be thankful for clinging onto while it passes.[/footnote]

 

[Thespian]

For me, probably Bastion and Deus Ex:Human Revolution.
Oh, and Dragon Age 2.

Bastion for me, was my Summer-of-Arcade purchase in lieu of Double Fine's Trenched (which technically wasn't an SoA title but close enough) because Trenched got a "delayed" European release, which still hasn't come. I hope for a competent time-consumer in Bastion and got a beautiful, intricate, and intensely enjoyable game that kept me thoroughly entertained right until I 100% completed it's ass in two playthroughs. Bastion served as sparkling example of masterfully employed video game writing, and comes sporting one of THE best video game OSTs this year, and just in general. Also, it was damn fun to blow stuff up with a cannon.

Deus Ex I had really no expectations for as I never played previous Deus Ex games. Still, I expected a high-quality game to satisfy both my hunger for stealth and my desire for Sci-Fi. DE:HR supplied both of those and so much more. Deus Ex's world immersed me almost immediately, as I got to know the winding streets of the major city hubs, as I explored the various paths of augmentation, as I delved into the fleshed out background of 2027, comprised of newspapers, e-mails, conversation snippets and even crumpled, coffee-stained props lying around the game world as additional details. Most of all I loved the multiple pathways through each goal. One minute I'd talk my way into a complex, the next I'd assassinate each guard methodically, or hack my way in and turn the building's defenses against the enemy, or maybe I'd sneak in without killing or harming anyone, and no one would know I'd been.

Upon hearing Dragon Age 2's imminent release I was... Unenthusiastic. I'd never played Dragon Age: Origins. However, I was a Bioware fanboy by way of Mass Effect and KOTOR and so I decided to pick up a preowned copy of DA:O for ?15, and played through it in the ensuing week. Though environments were drab and combat/level progressing was a little messy in general, some of the characters had heart and it was an engaging RPG experience, so I ended up buying Dragon Age 2 on release day.
And it swept me off my feet. In DA:O I was fond of Alistair(who wasn't?), Morrigan and particularly Zevran, but no other characters appealed to me. In Dragon Age 2, every character caught my interest and had me engaged, for better or worse. There was real drama, real tension, electricity in the atmosphere. It drove me forward in the game almost as much as the fun, intuitive (and not nearly as dumbed-down as everyone claimed) combat system did.
In DA2, I hardly noticed the flaws (such as repetitive environments, annoying random enemy spawns and a godawful ending) that might have crippled the fun of a lesser game. It's honestly one of my personal GOTY contenders (and let's face it, personal GOTY contenders are the only ones that really matter).

 

[Best of the 3]

Orcs must die. It's a solid Tower defence / 3rd person action game, deeper than it looks, great variation in traps, good humor, nice graphics, easy to relax and simple to pick up and play. Great fun and I highly recommend it. It's been the only other game that has dragged me away from Skyrim. That and a little bit of Shogun 2.

 

[AceTrilby]

Tie between Driver: San Francisco and Dead Island for the same reason - they actually turned out to be pretty good games!

 

[JoesshittyOs]

L.A. Noire.

It uh... wasn't that good, but it took you about 13 hours to realize that.

 

[The_Waspman]

While not exactly a huge surprise, I would probably say Limbo. I've made some terrible choices with games in the past (this means YOU, Prototype!!!) but I cringe every time I think about the fact I dropped £10 on this. Not saying it was a terrible game, by any means, but considering its only about an hours worth of entertainment, for what is essentially a flash game of the sort you can find free on the internet, with no replay value and pretentious as hell, I'd say it was a huge let down.

 

[Arina Love]

Rune Factory Tides of Destiny i was surprised how much i liked this game. 50+ hours in and still want to play every day. i even put aside skyrim to finish it.

 

[Akihiko]

Regarding the Xenoblade discussion. I can kind of see where you're coming from about the characters. Rather than it being character focused(An example would be FFXIII), it tends to focus more on the plot(ie FFXII). However, neither is bad. It comes down to preference which one you enjoy more. The characters are still good, regardless of that. I will admit I hated that some of the character interaction was relegated to unlockables which you had to grind for, mind you.

Anyway. Games that surprised me this year? Witcher 2, Yakuza 4 and Saints Row The Third.

I couldn't get into the original Witcher, due to the earlier chapters being long and uneventful, so I wasn't expecting much from the second. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

With Yakuza, I did actually quite enjoy Yakuza 3 but I never felt really attatched to it, I'm not quite sure why. Yakuza 4 on the other hand connected with me straight away, the new playable characters were great additions which were needed in my opinion, also none of the content was cut this time, making the city even more alive.

Saints Row 3 I actually only bought because I got it for £22. I owned the PC version of Saints Row 2, however the port was an absolute mess and didn't play very well. That combined with the annoying respect grinding between each mission I just gave up. SR3 on the other hand played perfectly on my PC. Was fluid and best of all, it looked great. I had a blast co-oping through the insane missions with a friend. Wasn't expecting it at all.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Innocent Sin surprised me. I expected to like it, I loved it instead. It has aged better than expected.

 

[hoboman29]

God Hand I heard it was weird and didn't believe it until the 4th guy I beat up turned into a demon.

 

[Destroyox]

DNF. How could a game that took over 14 years to develop suck so much?

This.

Also Brink, I really liked that game but I saw everybody thought it was the worst game ever (except TotalBiscut) which makes me kinda sad.

 

[Blondi3]

Skyrim in the surprised "it's so good" department and Batman Arkham City in the "wow this is a lot worse than I expected" category.

 

[Coldster]

Two games actually really surprised me: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. I thought MW3 was going to suck in every way possible or at least just be as bad as MW2. However, it has a fantastic multiplayer and a very neat spec ops mode. The campaign is still very mediocre, but not bad. Battlefield 3 on the other hand, I predicted to be amazing in every way. Unfortunately its campaign was lacking in a real story, and as good as the multiplayer is, it still didn't meet my personal expectations.

 

[Mute52]

I was surprised at all the amazing Indie games, lots of awesome work from those smaller devs

 

[Mallefunction]

Revelations because of how terrible it was. Expected at LEAST Brotherhood quality. Got shit instead.

The first AC game that I'm even considering a return. I'm a pretty big fan, but Ubisoft really lost the ball on this one.

What was wrong with it? I should probably find out before getting it

MANY MANY things.

-Altair's missions are short, totally linear, and really don't 'reveal' anything important. They also introduce a very lack luster villain with no prior mention.
-Almost none of the characters return or even get a mention and yet we're supposed to give a shit about these new one-game characters who barely get any screen time as is. One of them even dies off screen and yet we're supposed to feel bad about it.
-The story is short. Less than 6 hours if you run through it (without redoing missions, opening shops, raising your brotherhood, etc)
-Lots of gameplay frustrations such as the fact that your notorious meter goes up every time you BUY a shop. You can kill 5 guards and end up with nothing, but GOD FORBID you buy a bookstore.
-Desmond's mission are neither well designed nor reveal anything about his character that wasn't established in the first game and are generally worthless. It's basically first person platforming if you were 3 feet tall so the camera is too low and you often will make missteps just because of that.
-The city is rather ugly and small which considering that Brotherhood made Rome LOOK FANTASTIC (on the same development cycle of one year), that is incredibly sad.
-There is no big revelation like the title promises. Honestly, the entire story is pointless because you only find out one thing at the end of it.

The main issue I had was that the game simply wasn't fun. AC is all about the flow of the game, but because so many assholes kept complaining about how 'easy' it was, Ubisoft added in all these unneeded gimmicks like the grading system and the raised awareness (for buying shops? WTF?!) to slow people down so they couldn't just buy up every shop and move on. You have to stop what you're doing and go and bribe heralds DOZENS of times. And if you don't? Then you get the fucking DEN missions which are horrid. They aren't fun, are poorly designed and the camera HATES you.

What's worse is there is now a huge plot hole.

BIG SPOILER HERE, DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU PLAN TO GET THE GAME

Spoiler

In Brotherhood, Ezio hid the Apple away in Rome when he was 47. We know the Apple was STILL there because otherwise Desmond and the others wouldn't have been able to take it at the end of Brotherhood. But at the end of Revelations, the Apple is shown to have been locked away in a vault with Altair during the crusades nearly 300 years prior to Ezio's birth. Given that all of the pieces of Eden are supposed to be different, why are there suddenly two Apples? Where did the second one even come from? Etc

 

[sergnb]

batman arkham asylum. Couldn't believe the good reviews. Tried it. Blown away.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I didn't realize Dead Rising: Off the Record was going to be put to disc. Based on the amount of advertising I saw for it I thought it would be another Case West DLC only kind of thing.

 

[holographicman]

crysis 2 was pretty cool
hopefully crytek will fix the ai and add some originality to the multiplayer in cry3

red faction armageddon and saints row 3 were good, but failed to live up to their predecessors

and gears of war 3's campaign disappointed me but the multiplayer was great, that is until all my progress was wiped because epic didnt take the the time to kill all the bugs

fuck you epic i want my multiplayer skins back

also halo ce anniversary kinda sucks because of the lack of the original multiplayer

 

[zacattack14]

After playing Invisible Wars, Human Revolution was simply astounding, I fell in love with it

 

[Koroviev]

L.A. Noire.

It uh... wasn't that good, but it took you about 13 hours to realize that.

I watched a friend play it for a couple of hours. Eliminated any desire I had to try the game out for myself. Just looks boring as sin.