In Real Life

Games have influence, universal fact. From the innocuous way that playing Metro 2033 sent me to buy the novel it's based upon, to the debate around violent games that has recently flared up again. I'm not going to wade into said debate, because at the moment I don't think it's something that I can frame properly and say something worthwhile about. It's an extremely narrow view, but personal experience says violence in games hasn't affected me. I'm a lover of Tekken, and do you know what I take away from it? Not the need to go and punch someone in the face, but the urge to put a real life kung fu moviestar name to the games characters. As a for instance, Raven is obviously based on Wesley Snipes, Law and Lei are famously Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, Feng is clearly the guy with the rings from Kung Fu Hustle. Tekken bowl mode in the original Tekken Tag made me attempt to take up bowling as a hobby. I was terrible at it and I remain so.

So, I make real life decisions based upon what I've played. I suspect a lot of other people do too, and hopefully we can be well rounded and sensible enough to apply some common sense to those decisions. It's because of games that I developed a minor taste for adrenaline. I'm one of probably millions of people who took up skateboarding as a spotty teen after playing the first Tony Hawk games. I was rubbish, like most of us probably were, and I went on to getting my kicks on two wheels instead. I owe pretty much all of my scars to the mountain bike that I turned to after giving up on skating.

My best friend and I spend an awful lot of time on racing games, we've been karting several times to take the competition into real life. It turns out that most of the racecraft you learn in Gran Turismo can be quite useful. It takes a lot practice and adjustment, but the skills to learn a track, its braking points, racing lines, the fundamentals of drafting, and learning to judge grip translate quite handily from a gamepad to a kart. I can't speak for whether or not it applies to a proper sportscar as well though.

I learned about snowboarding from SSX. Although I don't ride, it does mean that I spend an awful lot of time on the Red Bull website, and of course, the reason I own a motorcycle is completely down to Road Rash. And this is just me. Aside from all of this I reckon games greatest influence is in the realm of music. How many of us have discovered new bands from a good licensed soundtrack? I can pretty much track back the entire range of my musical taste back to two games. Gran Turismo and Wipeout 2097. The rock from Gran Turismo, the electronica from Wipeout. I was 12 and 14 when I played these games. My mind was malleable. The Prodigy's Firestarter drilled itself into my brain and it's stayed there forever.

EA games in particular are great for finding new music. Say what you like about the games themselves, the licensed soundtracks have always seemed to be curated with care to maintain a particular atmosphere appropriate to the game it was a part of. From the laid back hip-hop of the NBA street games, the thundering electronica of SSX, the punk and indie of Burnout, to the rock and pop of FIFA. There are artists in those games who still have albums in my CD collection.

And now game music is flowing in the opposite direction. Where before, games companies bought in mainstream sounds, now original compositions are now going out and influencing tastes in the world outside of our hobby. A recent article, the one that actually inspired this post, in Edge Magazine detailed how Aeris' Theme from Final Fantasy VII and the theme from Skyrim have recently gatecrashed the Classic FM hall of fame. Aeris' theme is very high on the list, above several very famous classical pieces. Amongst gamers, it is rightly hailed as a masterpiece, and although it doesn't need it, it kind of feels good to have a piece of music so close to many people's hearts recognised by the relative mainstream.

We now live in a world where the London leg of the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds tour can sell out the Royal Albert Hall in a few minutes. Where Nobuo Uematsu's oeuvre can be considered a legitimate enough artform to be hosted at said venue. A world where the Final Fantasy VI opera can be performed live with genuine opera singers, backed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Voices. Most amazingly of all, the people performing this music, were obviously enjoying themselves. In case you haven't gathered yet, I was there. I was sat right above the stage. You could see the musicians faces and hear what the conductor was saying to them. It was an incredible experience. An event like Distant Worlds would not have happened in the UK even five years ago, and if it did it wouldn't be in a venue as prestigious as the Royal Albert Hall. I went to a Videogames Live concert a while back in Cardiff, and while the venue was large it still felt slightly under the radar. Flash forward a few years and Distant Worlds has all the hallmarks of a serious cultural event. It's amazing to see the change happening.

Less orchestral sounds are breaking out too. I'm a big fan of Bastion. I love its art, I love its story, I love the bluesy vibe woven by the narrator and the soundtrack. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the soundtrack for Christmas and the CD hasn't left my stereo since. The Bastion OST is pretty much the most listenable album I've heard in a very long time, by any mainstream artist or otherwise. Darren Korb's blend of complex beats, guitars in various esoteric tunings, strings and world instruments makes for an incredibly interesting listen. From the straightforward blues of The Pantheon, to the hazy opium den sitars of The Sole Regret, no two songs sound the same. People have asked what I'm listening to and are genuinely surprised when I tell them it's a game soundtrack. It's like they wonder for a moment why it's not all chiptune bleeps and bloops.

Then again, while chiptunes are still somewhat niche, there are slightly less underground producers out there working with synths mashed into all sorts of old consoles. Check out this cut from Joker. I recommend decent speakers. If you're a fan of the Hyperdub label you've probably heard of him. The synth genuinely sounds like its innards were transplanted from a Megadrive and the track itself sounds like something right out of Streets of Rage. It's not chart fodder for sure, but this is a producer with a record deal from an influential label using something that is, if not old games hardware, certainly sounds like it. It's people like this who will drag the sounds of our hobby out of the stereotypical darkened bedroom and into the daylight.

I genuinely feel like we're at the beginning of something here. Where the grand scores of games like Final Fantasy, Shadow of the Colossus and Journey find their way into regular play on Classic FM the way film scores have, and where composers step away from the orchestra and experiment with genre blending in the way Darren Korb and to a lesser extent, Akira Yamaoka have in their soundtracks to Bastion and Silent Hill. Eventually it might be perfectly normal to have a rack of game OSTs sat next to a rack of film soundtracks.

Gaming is culture too, and although some gamers might want to keep games underground, I personally think that if the music breaks into the mainstream, the rest of the world might be a bit more understanding about our sometimes obsessive hobby. Perhaps they might even wonder what they've been missing and give gaming a go themselves...

Old man rant.

Last week I touched on how I found myself wondering how I got by in console generations past. Although we're late in the day in the lives of the PS3 and 360, I've only just noticed that this is really the first console ever that I've not been hurting for space on. Thank the lord for 250 gig hard drives.

When I shelled out for my first Xbox, I plumped for the 20 gig model. I was too oldschool for my own good at the time. I'd seen the offerings on XBLA and decided I wanted no truck with it. Frankly, those early games looked pretty naff. A list of vintage arcade games that I could easily emulate on my PC with MAME. I thought digital distribution would never take off. I figured 20 gig would be ample space for my savegames.

Shows how much I know.

Some time after I got the Xbox, Geometry Wars 2 dropped. And it was incredible. From there there was no looking back, and I ended up having more XBLA games than boxed ones. But there was a problem. After around two years of gaming bliss I found myself banging my head against the suddenly restrictive 20 gig HDD. I found myself wishing I'd paid the extra few pounds for the Elite model. Fortunately, some might say, soon after this happened, the old Xbox red ringed and I had an excuse to upgrade. I got the old one repaired, gave it to my sister and never looked back. There are more than thirty XBLA games in my 250 gig Xbox, and it still isn't close to half full. It's wonderful, and I take it for granted. So long as I resist Microsoft's attempts to turn my GAMES MACHINE into some kind of media hub, I can't see myself ever filling it up.

This is in direct contrast to my PS1 and PS2.

Last week, I started Persona 4. Or at least I tried to. How on earth did I squeeze saves from all those games into 24 meg? Saying it nowadays sounds totally absurd when you think about it. Mobile Phones come with ten times more memory than that now. Jimmying around my savegames across the three 8 meg memory cards to free up as much space as possible without deleting anything took the best part of an hour. Of course, there was a minor detour into the still fabulous SSX3, but it was only to check which of the duplicate files was further along. Honest.

Going further back. How the hell did we manage with a measly single megabyte of memory on the PS1? I have five memory cards, into which are squeezed the completed, or near completed saves of upwards of 65 games. As I've written this, I've remembered what used to happen when I ran out of blocks on my memory cards. A moment of frustration, then ages spent working out how I was going to rustle up the considerable sum of pocket money a new memory card would cost me. My parents got the consoles, but apart from that,  I had to fuel my gaming habit myself. A memory card was a considerable investment back then.

Bizarrely, I find myself in the curious position of having to buy my first console memory card in around six years. It feels strange.

One extra step into the past, we didn't really even have memory cards. My MegaCD was the first console I ever had with internal memory. It never filled up because I could never find enough games to fill it with. But who remembers having to write down passwords to continue in your Megadrive games? I do. My copy of Road Rash 2 still has a load of paper in the box that is covered in sequences of random numbers and letters. Entering those is an experience I can tell you. Especially when you do it and you find out that you're worse at the game now than when you were when you were eleven. It's a sobering feeling. Worse was the password system for James Pond 3. It was a long set of objects in different colours. I genuinely have a notebook somewhere full of passwords written out in the format of, blue teacup, red umberella, blue laser, yellow laser, et cetera. Who thought that was a good idea? They always seemed to be EA games too.

I never owned a Snes or a Nes, so I may be utterly wrong on this, but I have vague recollections of Nintendo carts with battery backup saves on them. Did they ever go flat? What happened if they did?

Kids these days don't know they're born. With their massive HDDs, high definition and high speed optical media. It's all so easy you can ignore it. You think loading times on a PS3 are long? Try loading a game from both sides of a C90 cassette (old tech, if you don't know what a cassette is, google it), only to have the game crash at the 89th minute. It really used to happen, back in the days when Atari made their money out of computers rather than the royalties from slapping their logo over hipster tee-shirts.

Progress is amazing. We've got it so easy now.

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A Scattergun shot of a post.

A lot can happen in a week, HMV went into administration, I completed Bayonetta, and discovered that I'd been taking the virtually unlimited memory in my 360 for granted. Somewhere amongst that I should really make room for my impressions of the Wii-U too.

After a lot of years of badgering from my recent guest blogger, I decided to start Persona 4 on Monday. This required the not inconsiderable action of connecting my PS2 up, since it's space on the component input on my TV was taken by the Xbox when I got Rocksmith to cure the game's lag. Cables duly swapped, I blew out all the dust and fired up the PS2. I'd forgotten how loud it was. Although it is 11 years old now. The game starts and tells me I have no room on the memory card.

Well this is novel.

I swapped it for another and that turned out to be full too. So I swapped it for the third. Also full. With 250gb of memory in the 360, this is an issue I haven't come up against in a long time. Saving stuff nowadays is pretty much fire and forget. How did I squeeze the saves from almost seventy PS2 games into a paltry 24mb? Cue a bit of cursing and then an hour spent cross referencing saves and booting games to see which of the duplicate saves were further along before deleting them and copying from one card to another to free up enough space for a save on Persona.

While doing this I found myself playing SSX 3. Completely by accident.

Persona 4 got started on Tuesday. It's a slow burner, and frankly it looks like ass compared to a lot of late PS2 games, but that really doesn't matter. It's beginning to draw me in. I'm looking forward to continuing it. I did promise I was going to start it after completing Bayonetta.

After slightly fewer years of badgering from my recent guest blogger, I finally got round t0 Bayonetta around a week ago. I used to wax lyrical about Devil May Cry and I knew that Bayonetta would be right up my street. Frankly I don't know what took me so long.

It's extremely Japanese, with all the high camp, overlong cutscenes, nonsensical story, miscellaneous quirks and badass fighting systems that come with the label. It's saddened me to see the proportion of Japanese games that I own on the 360 shrink so much compared to the last generation. Bayonetta is a great reminder of just how good Japanese games can be. The game was difficult, even on normal and when I first started, the high camp, overlong cutscenes, nonsensical story and miscellaneous quirks grated. Eventually though, I stopped caring and let myself get swept along in the silliness of it all. Bayonetta is a great character, hypersexualised yes, but assertive and strong at the same time. She's a woman that's always on top of any situation, whether she's staring down a huge boss, riding a missile in a great Space Harrier tribute or sliding a motorbike under a lorry in my personal favourite section of the game, the Outrun inspired, Afterburner soundtracked Route 666.

The real star of the show was the combat though, balanced, nuanced,  precise, yet hyperkinetic, showy and over the top. If I died it was because it was my own bloody fault rather than the fault of the game. It's never cheap, but it is busy. You need to keep track of everything, but there is no attack that cannot be dodged. If you're properly dialled in, you can't be touched.

The game is chock full of Sega references, and I wonder, with Nintendo publishing the sequel as a Wii-U exclusive, what Platinum Games are going to pull out of Nintendo's past to play with. One thing is for certain though, Bayonetta 2 on the Wii - U is going to be interesting.

I suppose this brings me neatly onto the Wii - U, which I had the good fortune to experience over christmas.

First impressions were:

1: It's small. Really small. Around half the volume of my 360.

2: The Gamepad is going to take some getting used to.

3: Oh, I get it now. It's like a giant, superpowered DS

We were playing five player Nintendoland, and I have to say, it was a whole lot of fun. A bit like Mario Party without the hateful boardgame segment. The fact that it was so much fun isn't really all that surprising. Nintendo excel at local multiplayer. Of all the games companies out there today, Nintendo is the only one that doesn't seem to have lost sight of how great getting your mates together around the TV can be. The two best games were variations on hide and seek, Mario Chase and Luigi's ghost mansion, where the player with the Gamepad used the screen to get away from the other players or sneak up on them. Getting one over on your mates without them seeing where you came from is a great feeling.

My only gripes are that there aren't any analogue triggers on the Gamepad and that the touchscreen could have a higher resolution and could be multi touch. But really, these are small issues that won't matter. Even though I've only spent time with one game, I think the Wii - U will shape up to be a really great machine, if the developers can step up to the challenge that the gamepad presents. I'd hate to see it loaded down with shovelware like the Wii was.

And finally, something to get off my chest.

I'll admit to the HMV issue hitting me by surprise, and to having a vested interest. It saddens me to think that they might go under. I have fond memories of the place. If you know me, you'll know my first album was What's the Story, Morning Glory? by Oasis, it was on cassette, but the first actual CD I bought with my own money was Feeder's Echo Park, and I bought it from HMV. While I was at college, HMV was pretty much the sole provider of the soundtrack to my life. A significant proportion of the sixtyish PS1 games I own came from there too. The internet was a pretty new thing back then, I think I was still on Dial Up, and it hadn't begun to eat into HMV's sales in the way that eventually sent it into administration. 

After a few years in the wilderness in a rubbish job, I accidentally wound up working for HMV, and I felt like I belonged there. I left last year, but my offices still join to those of my old spot at HMV and I see my old colleagues there all the time, and now I worry for them. Whether you were bothered by the news or you thought HMV had it coming because they were rubbish / too expensive / too corporate, don't forget that real people with bills and houses and children will be losing their jobs if a buyer isn't found. I don't like ending on a downer, but we all know losing your job through no fault of your own is a horrible thing. Nobody likes going to the jobcentre. Let's not wish it on the thousands of people who work for HMV.

Games I'm looking forward to in 2013

We've hit 2013. Supposedly the last year of this generation. But good lord there are some great looking releases on the way. If this is this generation's final year, the PS3 and 360 are set to go down in a fiery blaze of glory, with a few new IPs and some highly evolved sequels. Games sites all over the web are putting up lists of their most anticipated games, so here is mine. I've restricted it to the two aforementioned consoles, since those are the only gaming machines I have regular access to. Although I own a 360 as my primary machine, frankly, with the amount of great looking PS3 exclusives on the way, my girlfriend's PS3 is going to see more action this year than it has in a very long time.

Here's to 2013. May it be excellent to everyone.

Now, onto the games! We'll start with the PS3 and take it from there.

The Last of us.

A new IP from Naughty Dog using all the lessons they've learned from Uncharted. What could possibly go wrong. What's most attractive to me about this game is the fact that the characters so far look far more complex than Uncharted's fine cast of lovable rogues. Despite the fact that nearly all videogames with an NPC companion are awful, I'm looking forward to trekking with Joel and Ellie through the most verdant post apocalypse since the criminally overlooked Enslaved. Comments have been made about the level of violence, and whether or not it is excessive remains to be seen. I'm hoping that it will be within the context of the desperate struggle for survival that the trailers so far have shown, rather than violence for violence's sake.

Still looks like it will turn out well though.

The Last Guardian.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are two of my all time favorite PS2 games. I adore the gorgeous desaturated aesthetic and the beautifully realized world the games inhabit. I love the sound of their invented language and the all encompassing atmosphere of melancholy. These are the reasons I would fall over myself to buy The Last Guardian in 2013. Yet the Last Guardian has been beset with troubles. Nothing has been seen or heard from it for the best part of a year. Fumito Ueda has left Team Ico, and most worryingly of all there are rumors of whole sections of the game having to be rebuilt from the ground up. I want to believe that Sony and Team Ico can meet and surpass the challenges that they are clearly having. I want to believe that The Last Guardian will see the light of day in 2013. Most of all I want to believe that it will be worth the wait.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.

The first Sly Cooper game was one of the only games I've ever brought on the strength of the back of the box alone. Needless to say I was surprised by how good it turned out to be, and I was delighted when its sequels turned out to be even better. There are few games imbued with as much personality as the Sly Cooper games. Sly himself is very much a raccoon Danny Ocean and the games themselves played a like tributes to all the great heist movies. If Sly's new developers can recapture the series past greatness, and the evidence looks positive so far, then the new Sly Cooper game is going to be well worth my time.

Ni No Kuni.

Two words: Studio Ghibli. Words you may have seen attached to such animated movie greats as Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Princess Mononoke. Ni No Kuni marries Ghibli's unique art style and way with a story to the RPG skills of Level 5, developers of Professor Leyton, Dragon Quest VIII and Dark Chronicle. With a pedigree like that, combined with one of the best sounding English localizations I've heard in quite a long time, Ni No Kuni should turn out to be quite special.

Fuse: Or the game formerly known as Overstrike.

Insomniac games go multiplatform, combining the insane weaponry and personality of Ratchet and Clank (my personal favorite platform series ever) with the gunplay of Resistance. I've not seen a lot of Fuse, apart from the teaser trailer from E3 a couple of years ago. Thankfully, Insomniac know their way around a great game now, having brought us the first three Spyro Games (the good ones), Ratchet and Clank, and Resistance. They know what they're doing. Leave them to it and watch the magic happen.

Beyond: Two Souls.

I really liked Fahrenheit, Quantic Dream's first game. It felt like a thoughtful evolution of all the point and click games I used to play as a kid. Playing from both sides of the story at the same time and a couple of moral choices gave an already unique game a further twist. It's a shame the story took a weird left turn at the end. I enjoyed the time I managed to spend with Heavy Rain too. Two Souls looks set to add some blockbuster movie action to the formula, while still maintaining the stellar modeling and animation that Quantic Dream have become known for. If he can further refine their signature gameplay hooks, David Cage's latest might finally live up to the potential that Quantic Dream have showed for so long.

Metro: Last Light.

I loved Metro 2033. It was a masterpiece of immersive setting, drenched in Russian culture with an  oppressively claustrophobic atmosphere. The world pressed against the edges of your mind, not just below ground in the dark, abandoned tunnels of the Metro, but also above ground, in the bombed out Moscow streets, thanks to the clever use of the gas mask. It was one of the bleakest games I've ever played, and therefore a refreshing change from the bombast of the current standard FPS mould.

Last Light is set to continue the work 4A Games put down on Metro 2033 whilst hopefully improving on some of the first game's slightly ropier elements. If the stars align and THQ survive long enough to publish it, it might just be one of the sleeper hits of 2013.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

I'm going to be honest, I've seen nothing but a fifty second teaser and a preview article on this, but it has me intrigued. The thing is, the world looks like a cross between Alan Wake and Fable, with gameplay that looks something like Ico. What's not interesting about that?

The Cave.

It's a Ron Gilbert Game. It has Double Fine's name attached. What more needs to be said? Thank the lord for digital distribution. It makes it possible for games this willfully old school to not only be made, but be successful too. I spent a long time playing point and click adventures as a kid. With the Walking Dead, and now The Cave and Double Fine adventure, it's great to see them returning to relevance.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Just look at the trailer. Look at it! I'm going to be so upset with THQ if this turns out badly. All the ingredients are there. It has Trey Parker and Matt Stone writing and voicing, a decent budget, veteran developers, a meaty looking gameplay concept, and it takes its look from one of the very best South Park episodes; The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers. Lets hope again that THQ survives long enough to release it.

Crysis 3.

It's Crysis. Simple as. So it's going to be gorgeous. It's going to have fantastic, open ended gameplay. It's going to be expansive. It's going to have a fairly naff story, but that doesn't matter. As far as I'm concerned, Crysis is hands down the best FPS series since Unreal Tournament went AWOL after it's third installment. It's late in the console cycle now. Crytek know their way around the hardware. Crysis 3 could be their crowning achievement of this generation.

DmC.

DmC got a bad rap when it was first announced. The fanboys whinged about Dante's new look and the change of developer. Personally I ignored the whole thing. I'd fallen out of love with Dante. Devil May Cry 4 was pretty bad, so I didn't have high hopes for its sequel.

Then I heard Ninja Theory was on development duties under the guidance of Capcom and had my interest piqued. I personally love both of Ninja Theory's previous games, flawed gems that they are, and hopefully Capcom are able to help them iron some of those kinks out with DmC. I've played the demo and things look promising, but if you're still suspicious of the new game, think of it like this: Devil May Cries 1 and 3 were awesome. Devil May Cries 2 and 4 weren't. Therefore, the odd numbered entries in the series are the good ones. DmC is the fifth. It can't fail. Can it?

Metal Gear Rising.

Metal Gear's cyborg ninjas have always been pretty badass. Now we get to play as one! Early development was troubled, and Platinum Games ended up taking the helm. This is frankly a Very Good Thing. If anybody knows brawlers, it's Platinum. They're the people behind the fabulous Bayonetta, which I've finally started. If they can evoke the sort of flow state that Bayonetta does when the screen fills with enemies, while maintaining that awesome looking slicing mechanic, Metal Gear Rising is going to be the cause of some sublime videogame carnage.

Dead Space 3.

Dead Space caught me by surprise. I had completely got it into my head that it was an unimaginative mash up of Alien, The Thing and Resident Evil 4. Then I played my old housemates copy and it turned out to be exactly that; a mash up of Alien, The Thing and Resident Evil 4. But it was awesome! And it was far creepier than I'd been expecting too. Dead Space then, is one of those games that cribs from all over the place and still manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. Visceral aren't resting on their laurels for the third installment however. They're opening the action out, stepping away from the corridors of the previous two games and out onto a frozen landscape straight out of The Thing. They have also added a separate co-op campaign where each character will have differing experiences due to their respective mental states and they have changed up the weapon upgrades to better reflect Isaac's skills as an engineer. All this should hopefully make this latest descent down Isaac's spiral of madness the best in the series so far.

Tomb Raider.

I've tried to like the old Tomb Raider games. I really have, and I've never clicked with any of them. I had a passing acquaintance with Tomb Raider: Underworld, but I ended up getting fed up of the godawful controls and giving up. I tried so hard to like it.

There are two reasons I'm interested in this reboot.

One. It has Rhianna Pratchett attached as the writer.

Two. The game is being rebuilt from the soles of Lara's boots upwards.

On the one hand the game looks like a complete Uncharted clone, but on the other, this new interpretation of Lara looks to be a far more complex character than Nathan Drake, and I find that compelling. If Ms Pratchett can work her magic on the story and Crystal Dynamics can fix the controls, Tomb Raider could shape up to be a very good game indeed.

Bioshock Infinite.

Few games have explored such complex themes as Bioshock and its sequel. Few creators put as much thought into their worlds as Ken Levine. Bioshock Infinite looks set to continue on both of those trends. There have been teasers flying around for this game for ages, so we all know plenty about it. Personally I can't wait to see the Songbird, take to the skyrails and rescue Elizabeth from her tower. It's going to be a hell of a ride.

So there we have it. Sorry it was late, this post wound up being huge and way more work than I anticipated. My wallet is starting to cry at the prospect of all this expenditure, but it had to be done. Normal service resumes with the next post. I've spent some time on my best mate's Wii U. Opinions may follow.

The Round Up

Last night wrapped up 2012, and while it's a little late, I wouldn't be much of a blogger if I didn't pull out a list of my favourite games of the year gone by.

Being a normal guy with a normal job means I sadly can't afford every single one of the big releases of the year. Nor do I have the time to play them, so my list is restricted to games that I actually finished. It's not a definitive best of. You won't find the likes of Far Cry 3, Forza Horizon or Tekken Tag 2 here, as much as I'd like them to be. Since I haven't actually got those games yet, including them would be a bit of a sham, no matter how well they reviewed. Think of the run down below as a round up of my favourites of the new releases that I managed to play over the the past year. So, let's start with numero uno.

The Walking Dead.

Everything that can be said about The Walking Dead as a game has already been said, some of it even by me. It's won more game of the year awards than it's possible to count and it's all justified. From its superlative voice acting, to its affecting story, its sledgehammer ending and its fantastic (nearly) mainstream revival of old school point and click mechanics, almost everything in The Walking Dead makes it a work of genius. But for me, the best part apart from all of that was the episodic release model. By ending each episode on a cliff hanger and making us wait for the next, The Walking Dead was a near constant conversation point between my friends. Sitting over a beer, discussing plot points, characters, where we thought the story might go, the decisions we made, why we made them and how bad that made us as people was almost as great as the experience of the game itself. I can't wait for season 2.

Dishonored.

Winner of all of the game of the year awards not given to The Walking Dead or Journey, and rightly so. I've blogged about Dishonored in the past, so I'll try not to repeat myself.

Dishonored is a triumph. It absolutely nails what I consider to be the three pillars that hold up a great game, gameplay, setting and story. The game gives you pretty much free rein in how you approach it's missions. It encourages you to experiment with its systems and often rewards you for it. The city of Dunwall grounds the game in a richly imagined universe with a sense of place that rivals any game out there, and in my personal opinion is probably the best gaming setting since that of Half Life 2. It's beautiful too, with art liberally hung upon Dunwall's virtual walls and the city looking almost like a painting itself. On the story front, it's a time honored tale of betrayal, redemption and rescue, simple yet effective, and barely hampered at all by the silent protagonist's near complete lack of personality. The fact that the only thing I can find to rant about is Dishonored's silent protagonist shows the quality of this fabulous game. If you haven't played it already, I urge you to.

Fez.

No enemies, no peril, no game over screen. Despite it's sometimes fiendish puzzles, and the tetris block language that I'll probably never be able to translate, Fez is the most relaxing gaming experience I've had all year. There is literally just you and a massive world to explore and decypher. I loved its retro look. I loved its soothing chiptune soundtrack. I loved the clever gameplay hook that lets you rotate the world around the x-axis. Fez is about as indie as they come and all the better for it. I love it dearly.

Trials Evolution.

My secret stash of gaming crack cunningly disguised as a fridge-full of my gaming comfort food. Whenever there is doubt about what to play there is one answer. Trials. What starts as a simple racer quickly becomes a relentlessly addictive one-more-go motorcycle based platformer that eventually morphs into a how-the-hell-do-I-get-up-that motorcycle based puzzle game. No matter how many times Trials evolution beats me around the face with its sometimes extreme difficulty, I always wind up coming back for more. I'm an addict.

Jet Set Radio.

Yes, it's a re-release of a decade old Dreamcast game. Yes, the gameplay is a bit ropey sometimes. Yes, there's a huge difficulty spike at the Noise Tanks level. No, I don't care about any of that. Jet Set Radio is a classic. Period. If ever there was a game that was greater than the sum of its parts, JSR is it.

Its wildly stylized look means it has aged remarkably well, the soundtrack remains awesome and you can skate up behind a cop and graffiti his back. Despite sometimes clunky controls and the complete lack of a free camera, Tokyo-to is a joy to inhabit. Virtually tagging a wall and then running away from the cops while they chase you in tanks and helicopters is an experience I can recommend to everyone.

Dust.

One of the stand out indie games of the year. Dust is beautiful to behold, a joy to play, and the owner of a surprisingly good story. The combat and exploration both surprised me with their depth, and the fact that most of it is the work of just one person is even more impressive. Dust itself is just the first part of a larger story set in the world of the game. Personally I hope this means more games, because I'd happily buy them. If you overlooked Dust on release, download the trial. You'll thank yourself for it.

SSX.

Ahh, SSX. Always reliably amazing on the PS2, I owned every game in the original series bar SSX Blur and loved every one of them. The combination of ludicrous stunts, larger than life characters, festival atmosphere and consistently incredible licensed soundtracks made for a near perfect gaming experience. Suffice to say, I was very excited when I got my paws on a copy of the new SSX. Initially I was bitterly disappointed. Gone was the festival atmosphere, gone were the huge personalities, gone was the old control system that I knew so well. It was jarring. The difficulty didn't help either. At first it seemed like all that was left of SSX was a another great soundtrack and a bunch of snowboards. All of a sudden though, at the point that I was giving up trying to like it, SSX clicked. I slipped into the flow state so easily entered in the old games and SSX came back to me. Massive air was obtained, monster tricks were busted, helicopters stalled upon, wingsuits deployed. Somewhere under all the new stuff, I found SSX's old soul, and when I brought it back into the daylight, that old soul burned as brightly as it ever had in SSX's illustrious past. I'm still playing it, on and off, nearly a year after I first started it. Long live the king of extreme sports games.

So there you have it, my personal favourites of 2012. My only regret is that I couldn't afford to buy the rest of the great games that came out over the year, but oh well, I'll catch up eventually. Also, to those wondering why Journey isn't on the list, my answer is that I fervently wish it was, but I don't own a PS3 and my girlfriend hasn't downloaded it on hers yet. I know it's a rubbish excuse, but it's the best I have.

I end with an Honorable Mention. A game that is so not eligible for this list it's a joke, but it provided some of the best moments around a console with my mates all year. That game is:

Circuit Breakers.

Greatest multiplayer game known to man. In possession of a totally level playing field. Capacity to win totally reliant upon ones own skill, luck, sheer mean spiritedness and ability to smack talk. Cause of many arguments. Settlement of none. Track a copy down, slap it in your PS3, pair up four pads and prepare to call Bullshit on the guy who knocked you off on the last corner to claim victory. The most fun you can have with three other people while keeping your clothes on.