Jobydrone's Top Ten Favorite Games of 2012

[Jobydrone]

Hello friends!  It's that time of year again, time for me to put on my thinking cap and reflect back on my year of gaming, so I can share with you my (third? fourth?) annual JobyDrone's TopTen Favorite Games 2012 edition.  My hope is that those of you that read this might get some ideas of games to play that you might have missed, which could be useful now since a lot of these have been out for a while and the prices have dropped and can now be picked up at a deep discount.  For those of you that have seen my prior year's posts you know the routine, but for the newbs in the audience I'll go over the requirements quickly:

Basically the only criteria are that the game had to have been released in the year 2012, and I had to have played it enough to form a coherent opinion on it.  Simple, right?  This means that many games that might be on other people's lists won't show up here because of my personal tastes in gaming.  I am not a major fan of first person shooters, I don't buy them and rarely play them.  So you won't see Halo 4 on this list, for example.  Also I don't play sports games, so the top sports releases of the year like Madden or FIFA won't show up either.  Also it's not necessary that I've played the game to completion, otherwise you probably wouldn't be reading this until about 2015 or so ;)  Also, I don't own a Nintendo 3DS or the new Nintendo WiiU, so no games for those systems were eligible for this list.  Finally, I'll list in parentheses the console or OS I played the game on, and try to list all available systems for the games before my short review.

So with all that said, let's get to the games!

10.  Angry Birds Star Wars (iOS) also available on Android, PC, and Mac OS

Angry Birds has been a phenomenon in the gaming world.  For a video game, it sits with pretty limited company (along with Ms. Pac Man, Wii Sports and a few others) as a title that has successfully crossed all of the boundaries that separate gamers from non-gamers, hardcore and casual fans, to appeal to pretty much anybody that can hold a phone, tablet, mouse, or other input device.  The original is probably the most successful mobile game ever released.  This year the game's publisher Rovio released the fifth iteration of the title (after Angry Birds Seasons, Rio, and Space) and branded it with the coveted Star Wars license.  It takes the tried and true formula of the original game, along with the new gravity/orbiting elements introduced in Angry Birds Space, and added very cool Star Wars themed powers to all the birds.  Your red bird sports a lightsaber, the yellow bird a blaster, the black bird a force push ability, and so on.  Couple these with great Star Wars music and sound effects, Star Wars themed worlds like Tatooine, Hoth, Dagobah, and the Death Star,and tons of unique levels you can replay over and over to try to get that perfect score, and you've got quite a value at only 99 cents (for the iPhone version).  Addictive and fun for the whole family, I and my kids have been playing a lot of this since it came out.

9.  The Simpsons:  Tapped Out (iOS)

I hesitated to include this one because it's really barely a game.  But I've been playing so much of it I decided to anyway.  It's a "freemium" game similar to titles like Farmville or Mafia Wars where you pay nothing to play but are heavily encouraged to make in game purchases to level up faster or to obtain bonuses and premium content.  I never played one of these types of games before, but because of my love for the Simpsons I decided to see what all the fuss was about.  The general idea is that Homer has caused a nuclear meltdown at the power plant, and blown up the town.  The player is tasked with rebuilding the town however they see fit, by purchasing houses, stores, buildings, decorative items, etc. that you will recognize from the show.  You earn money by making characters perform tasks, which is basically choosing something off a menu then turning off the game and coming back later to collect your rewards, which are cash and XP that levels up your town.  As you build iconic buildings, new characters show up in the town which you can set to new tasks (for example build the Quick-E-Mart, and Apu shows up in town).  I am generally opposed to this kind of game because I hate the blatant manipulation of the player to try to get them to spend money, but I've gotten into this one, due to the Simpsons style humor sprinkled throughout the game, as well as the addictive nature of moving your items around to try to make the nicest looking Springfield you can.  The game is free, and you don't have to spend a penny on it if you don't want to, and I've been having a lot of fun with it at no cost

8. The Witcher 2:  Assassins of Kings (Xbox 360) also on PC and Mac

This game actually came out in 2011 for PC, but was released for the 360 this year and that's the version I played.  It's a very complex third person action RPG, where you control a "Witcher" that's basically a genetically enhanced human and a monster-killer for hire. You quickly become embroiled in a fairly generic assassination and frame job where you're accused of murder, but the coolest thing about this game is that while it does follow a general path and story arc, there's so much content, side-quests, different actions you can take, that no two games could possibly be played the same way.  There's multiple endings based on the actions you took throughout the game, and it's possible and actually unavoidable that you can miss or simply not experience whole areas and elements of the game because of decisions you make.  That, combined with a lot of player choice on how you build and level up your main character (magic, stealth, combat, crafting, etc) makes the game extremely replayable multiple times.  The game is beautiful to look at, with a fantastic epic score, terrific writing, voice acting, and dialogue.  It's very easy to get lost in this game world.  I found the combat extremely complex and still haven't mastered it, and the user interface is extremely difficult to navigate.  But there's a lot of reward here for sticking with the challenges you'll face.  I still have a lot of playing to do here, and can't wait to get back to it.

7. Sleeping Dogs (Xbox 360) also on PS3, PC, and OnLive

Originally intended as an update/sequel in the True Crime series of video games, Sleeping Dogs was scrapped by its publisher Activision for being delayed and over budget, and almost destined for the scrap heap when it was saved by Square Enix and released as an original title.  At its most basic level, the game is Grand Theft Auto: Hong Kong.  It's an open world, third person action/adventure with a little Shenmue style RPG mechanics thrown in.  You play as Wei Shin, an undercover cop tasked with infiltrating the Hong Kong crime syndicate.  As you complete main story and side missions, you gain cop XP, triad XP, and "face" XP, which raises your level in those three areas until you gain points which can be used to learn new fighting and gunplay techniques and upgrade your skills.  The strongest element of this game is its hand to hand combat.  Fighting groups of enemies is tons of fun, reminiscent of the recent Batman or Assassin's Creed games.  Also the voice acting and graphics during the cinematic sequences are top notch.  You really feel like you're part of a traditional Hong Kong action flick.  The best part of this game is how they take the familiar element s of recent open world games like GTA and Red Dead Redemption, and make them fun and much less tedious.  I hope Rockstar Games is watching and incorporate some of these elements in their upcoming GTA 5 next year.

6.  Journey (PS3 via Playstation Network download)

Journey is an amazing little game, and really tough to review because the less known about it going in, the more moving and unique the experience is for the player in the end.  It's a single player third person exploration game, with some really brilliant and original multiplayer elements never before tried in a video game.  You start off wandering in a gorgeously realized desert environment, and as you can infer from the title, the game details your Journey...towards where or what I won't and can't say.  The whole game is about 3 hours long, but you'll want to experience it at least once more after finishing it for the first time.  Along the way you'll run into another character that looks just like you.  You can't really communicate with your new partner in any other way than little beeps and chirps that you get by pushing a button on your controller, but placing you with another randomly selected character from the game world, who happens to be at the same point of the game as you, gives the whole experience deeper meaning and some really interesting texture as you learn more about where you are and where you're going.  Highly recommended as the most unique, original experience you'll have gaming this year.

5.  Diablo 3 (Mac) also available on PC

Probably the most highly anticipated game of the year, perhaps of all time, Diablo 3 was also possibly one of the biggest disappointments of the year for many people.  At its core, Diablo 3 is the ultimate loot gathering dungeon crawl.  There's a story here, some interesting characters, but at the end of the day, all that matters is how much fun you're having on the way to the next boss and the next epic loot that drops.  Oranges rule, and purples and blues ain't bad either.  If you are the type of player that's going to play this game over and over, and don't feel like you've experienced it at its fullest without beating it multiple times on the highest difficulty, well, you might be disappointed by the lack of balanced loot drops and the fact that you probably have to spend real money on the auction house to get items and equipment powerful enough to let you survive on the highest difficulty level.  But for me, playing the game through on Nightmare difficulty (normal is just too easy), experiencing the engaging story, and experimenting with the fun new character classes (Witch Doctors and Monks are really cool) was worth the $60 price tag.  I won't be playing this game to the obsessive level of some that are most vocal about the game's faults, but hey, that's okay!

4.  Dishonored (Xbox 360) also on PS3 and PC

Dishonored is a first person stealth/action hybrid game that takes elements from a lot of extremely successful games from this generation and combines them into a package that makes for an extremely fun, challenging experience however you choose to play it.  You'll find similarities to the great game Bioshock with how a fascinating story and hidden items flesh out a fully realized universe.  Dishonored also borrows from Bioshock with how you can build your character with cool original skills and abilities that make your character seem unique and different based on the choices you make.  It also borrows from Deus Ex and the Hitman franchises by allowing many different options for how the player can choose to complete any given quest or objective.  You can choose stealth, all-out assault, lethal and non-lethal methods to complete in game goals, and the decisions you make have a real and lasting effect on the game world that surrounds you.  Player choice is the biggest draw in this game, and allows for multiple playthroughs that result different experiences each time.

3.  Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360) also on PS3, Wii U, and PC

Bioware is probably my favorite game developer of all time, because their games show the effort and care taken in creating a story and game universe as real and interesting as any book or movie in the genre their game entails.  The Mass Effect series is no exception and perhaps the greatest example of this.  Mass Effect 3 is the highly anticipated conclusion of the Commander Sheppard trilogy, and it's fascinating to see how the developers have catalogued and utilized the choices and decisions players made in the previous two games and showed the meaningful impact they had on the world in this third game.  The combat, which was just okay in the first and way better in the second, has been perfected in this third outing.  It's a testament to how excellent the combat has become that I sometimes got impatient with the fantastic story because I wanted to experience more action sequences.  One original and fascinating option new to this third game, is that you can choose the type of game experience you want to have from beginning to end.  Want and more streamlined shooter style game?  Pick that at the beginning and you won't have to deal with the long conversation trees and decisions during cinematic sequences that dominate much of the game.  Want to play an interactive movie and avoid the shooting and action sequences?  You can choose that too.  Most, I'm sure, pick the third option which is how the game is really intended to be played, a combination of both.  There's was a lot of controversy surrounding the end of the game which many seemed to feel was rushed and incomplete, and in an unprecedented response, Bioware actually released a 2+ gigabyte patch that expanded the ending and gave a stronger feeling of closure to the characters you've fallen in love with over the course of these three games.  Combined with a robust multiplayer mode that blends extremely well with the single player experience, and Mass Effect 3 cements the series as one of the must-play experiences on this generation of consoles.

2.  The Walking Dead:  The Game (Xbox 360) also on PS3, iOS, PC, and Mac

From my earlier review on the forums:
This is one of the most unique and intense gaming experiences I've had in a long time. The game is produced by Telltale, which is made up of former LucasArts employees who worked on the classic Monkey Island adventure games from the 90s and the more recent Sam and Max series. More recently Telltale has developed adventure games based on the Back to the Future and Jurassic Park movie franchises, with varying degrees of success. Their latest venture is a series of adventure games based on writer Robert Kirkman's comic book version (rather than the TV series most people are familiar with) of the Walking Dead. While there is some initial crossover with characters from the comics in episode one, the game primarily focuses on a whole new group of characters. You play as a convicted criminal, being transported to prison as the zombie apocalypse begins and you escape from incarceration and begin your fight for survival. Early on you take on a young girl as a companion and your fight to survive is given equal importance as your desire to protect and nurture this little girl who only has you to depend on.

The Walking Dead games were released episodically, in about 2 1/2 hour segments split up over five episodes. This game contains possibly the best writing I've ever seen in a video game, with truly heart wrenching choices the player is forced to make. You really get the feeling that the decisions and choices you make have a significant and meaningful impact on the direction the game takes, who lives, and who dies. At around five dollars per episode it's a great value and a great experience.

1.  Xcom Enemy Unknown (Xbox 360) also on PC and PS3

The storied developer Firaxis, best known for Sid Meier's Civilization series, has picked up the reins of this classic PC franchise, and really no one is better since the Civ games are the best, most accessible turn based strategy games out there.

Well until now, that is.

This game is absolutely incredible. Everything awesome about turn based strategy is here, in a package that is beautiful to behold visually, easy to understand conceptually, but brutally difficult to master without ever feeling unfair or unreasonable. If you die, and boy will you die, you always feel it's because you could or should have done something better or differently, not because the game threw something at you that it shouldn't have.

The world is under attack by evil, super powerful, killer aliens, and it is up to the secret X-Com program to save the planet. At its core, the new X-Com game is split between two modes. The first is a really neat base building mechanic, during which you develop your facilities (workshops, foundries, power stations, satellite networks, alien containment systems, etc etc), build weapons and vehicles, train and outfit your soldiers, research new technologies, and monitor the state of panic going on all over the world. All this costs money, which is extremely scarce, and you never have enough to do everything you want or need to, so prioritization is key.

The second mode is the turn based game, where you send four to six of your soldiers in a squad to respond to some type of alien threat on the ground: Alien abductions, escorting key personnel, terror missions, exploring downed UFOs. There's a ton of variety in the ground missions but one thing is the same in every one...at any time, one wrong move could mean the gruesome death of a character you have built from raw recruit to seasoned veteran...and there ain't no coming back. (well there is a generous "save anywhere" system that hopefully you will remember to take advantage of before your favorite guy dies). Your soldiers are split into different classes with special abilities, like heavy weapons, Sniper, Support, and Assault, and who you bring means a great deal to how the mssions play out. As squad members level up, new perks and abilities become available that make individual squad members much more valuable and you feel pretty bad when they die.

This game is so much fun, it's got a serious addictive "just one more turn" type of quality that has kept me up until the wee hours of the morning for the past few days now. The story, while simple, is really well written and engaging. There's mulltiplayer too, for those so inclined, but I don't see myself diving into that anytime soon, when there's so much variety in the single player campaign.
Xcom Enemy Unknown is the most fun I've had with a video game this year.

[Jobydrone]

Honorable mentions
I thought I'd add a couple of mentions of games that didn't make the list this year for one reason or another but are certainly worthy contenders for any top ten list anywhere.

Borderlands 2 is the sequel to a game I had a ton of fun with a few years ago.  I rented this one but didn't have enough time to play it to the extent that I could include it on my list this year.  I have a feeling when I pick it up I'll enjoy it a great deal.

Far Cry 3 just released this week, and it's being widely lauded by game reviewers as the best in the series and possibly the best FPS of the year.  I definitely am interested in picking this one up eventually, but unfortunately not before the end of the year.

Pinball FX 2 is probably the game I've played the most of this year.  They keep releasing awesome virtual pinball tables for this game about every three months or so.  The most recent were tables based on Plants Vs. Zombies and Marvel Comic's Civil War event series from a while back.  Awesome fun if you're into virtual pinball.

Finally, I seem to have kicked my World of Warcraft addiction, or at least replaced it with more single player focused experiences.  I know this because Blizzard released the fourth WoW expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and while it was hard to stay away, I managed to do so for the first time ever.  I've heard great things though, and I'm sure if I had bitten this time, the game would have appeared on my list.

I hope those of you that have taken the time to read all this rambling take some even more time to write some of your impressions, comments, and list some of your favorite games of the year as well.  Thanks!

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Hmm. I agree with your choices except for Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3, though granted my beef with Mass Effect 3 is due to EA. I think Diablo was beaten out by Torchlight II in quality. TL2 had a lot better development behind it, no forced DRM, no stupid auction house scam/cheat scheme or anything of that nonsense. It also had a lot better gameplay from what I could tell but I never played Diablo 3 (see aformentioned DRM).

Journey is a game I've wanted to play badly but I don't have a console so it's a game I'll have to go without. XCOM is another game I've wanted to play but with my GPU exploding in my face I haven't been able to afford buying the game yet. Since the Walking Dead final episode came out recently, I've decided that it's probably worth my attention sooner or later.

Good list though! I'll be publishing my list of Top games later this month but will cross post to my usual thread when that happens. :).

[billybob476]

Diablo kind of fizzled out for me, there wasn't enough to keep me in it. I am having tons and tons of fun with X-COM, gonna be reviewing it on my next podcast!

[Jobydrone]

Hmm. I agree with your choices except for Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3, though granted my beef with Mass Effect 3 is due to EA. I think Diablo was beaten out by Torchlight II in quality. TL2 had a lot better development behind it, no forced DRM, no stupid auction house scam/cheat scheme or anything of that nonsense. It also had a lot better gameplay from what I could tell but I never played Diablo 3 (see aformentioned DRM).

Journey is a game I've wanted to play badly but I don't have a console so it's a game I'll have to go without. XCOM is another game I've wanted to play but with my GPU exploding in my face I haven't been able to afford buying the game yet. Since the Walking Dead final episode came out recently, I've decided that it's probably worth my attention sooner or later.

Good list though! I'll be publishing my list of Top games later this month but will cross post to my usual thread when that happens. :).

Thanks!  Yeah didn't play Torchlight 2, since for me, they made the dreadful mistake of being beaten to release by Diablo 3, and I had enough clicking from my three playthroughs of D3 by the time Torchlight came out.  Down the road I'll give it a try.  Journey is probably not worth buying a PS3 for...but if you don't have a bluray player then I'd say get one and then play that game first thing.  As for Walking Dead, there might not be enough "game" there for you...it's more of an interactive comic than actual game...but if you like the comic or show then you can't miss it. 

[Jobydrone]

Diablo kind of fizzled out for me, there wasn't enough to keep me in it. I am having tons and tons of fun with X-COM, gonna be reviewing it on my next podcast!

Yeah but didn't you play D3 through to Inferno?  That's pretty hardcore!

[billybob476]

Not me, I didn't play much Diablo at all, not even sure I got through the initial runthrough.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Hmm. I agree with your choices except for Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3, though granted my beef with Mass Effect 3 is due to EA. I think Diablo was beaten out by Torchlight II in quality. TL2 had a lot better development behind it, no forced DRM, no stupid auction house scam/cheat scheme or anything of that nonsense. It also had a lot better gameplay from what I could tell but I never played Diablo 3 (see aformentioned DRM).

Journey is a game I've wanted to play badly but I don't have a console so it's a game I'll have to go without. XCOM is another game I've wanted to play but with my GPU exploding in my face I haven't been able to afford buying the game yet. Since the Walking Dead final episode came out recently, I've decided that it's probably worth my attention sooner or later.

Good list though! I'll be publishing my list of Top games later this month but will cross post to my usual thread when that happens. :).

Thanks!  Yeah didn't play Torchlight 2, since for me, they made the dreadful mistake of being beaten to release by Diablo 3, and I had enough clicking from my three playthroughs of D3 by the time Torchlight came out.  Down the road I'll give it a try.  Journey is probably not worth buying a PS3 for...but if you don't have a bluray player then I'd say get one and then play that game first thing.  As for Walking Dead, there might not be enough "game" there for you...it's more of an interactive comic than actual game...but if you like the comic or show then you can't miss it. 

I don't need a blu-ray player and I won't buy consoles as they are now anyway. Too limiting in some aspects for me. So I won't likely get to play Journey unless it ever gets a PC port. Walking Dead is definitely on the fringe of what I personally consider enjoyable. Point-and-clicks usually aren't my shtick but I do enjoy a good story (especially in games) and from everything I've heard (including you) people have said this game has a great story so I'll probably pick it up sometime. When? Well, whenever my budget recovers lol.

[Jobydrone]

Not that anyone seems to care but I've been playing Far Cry 3 for the past week or so, and if I had waited to write up my list it would definitely be up there at number two, pushing Walking Dead down to #3 and Angry Birds Star Wars off the list (or maybe that dumb Simpsons game even though I still play it 3-4 times a day ugh).

This game is amazing fun, and I see it carrying me well into the new year as the addictive nature of the gameplay is keeping me totally engaged.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Not that anyone seems to care but I've been playing Far Cry 3 for the past week or so, and if I had waited to write up my list it would definitely be up there at number two, pushing Walking Dead down to #3 and Angry Birds Star Wars off the list (or maybe that dumb Simpsons game even though I still play it 3-4 times a day ugh).

This game is amazing fun, and I see it carrying me well into the new year as the addictive nature of the gameplay is keeping me totally engaged.

I've been watching a LP series of the game and I so badly want to play Far Cry 3. But my ban on Ubisoft and Uplay prevents me from playing the game at this time.

[Jobydrone]

It's really really good, you should play it

[KingIsaacLinksr]

It's really really good, you should play it

Until Ubisoft drops the Uplay requirement on PC, no can do. I don't recall hearing any reports of DRM in this game but I think that's what Uplay is for so *shrug*.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Since Rico locked the thread and I'm not going to open a new one for a while, I'll just post this here if anyone wanted to comment on my Top 10 list of games for 2012. Figured it was ok since it's the same general subject.

http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/kings-top-10-favorite-and-honorable-games-of-2012/

-King

[Jobydrone]

Looking forward to checking it out!  Happy holidays and hope to see you in 2013 my brother!

[Jobydrone]

It's really really good, you should play it

Until Ubisoft drops the Uplay requirement on PC, no can do. I don't recall hearing any reports of DRM in this game but I think that's what Uplay is for so *shrug*.

I used Uplay points to buy an additional gun and an exclusive mission on the xbox version, not sure if DRM is involved but it's a console so *double shrug* pretty cool gun though, haven't played the mission yet