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.

A guest post! About a not quite shambling corpse.

Today sees the blog’s first guest post. One by a friend of mine. He’s offering up an alternative view on The Walking Dead, and while it differs with the correct perspective one should have upon such things (ie, my own) I'm going to serve it up in the spirit of balance, and also, because he's my mate.

So, here it is:

You know what really grinds my gears (of war)? People whose opinion was subconsciously swayed by the last 10 minutes of The Walking Dead and now think it’s the best game ever.

An old photo of myself and my guest blogger.

So, a little about myself, the guy who has now made himself about as popular as the perpetrators of the ending of Mass Effect 3 with that comment. I’m a frenemy of our resident blogger and have known him since we were kids. We’re something like Sonic and Knuckles circa Sonic 3, before the countless annoying allies multiplied out of all control, like how I imagine Cream's offspring would. Yeah. Anyhow, I’m here to provide an alternate (better) opinion to that of our resident blogger.

Things start off well in The Walking Dead. I would go as far to say that episodes 2 and 3 provide some of gaming’s greatest moments. The decisions you were forced to make were compellingly horrifying, enhanced by the believable reactions from a group of fellow travellers that you could never ever fully trust.

So it’s such a shame that it goes downhill from then on. Episode 4 introduces some rather bland characters to replace those that we bonded with from the first 3 episodes. Is it possible that Telltale Games realised this and thus overcompensated with too many action sequences? This ended up with several zombies being annihilated with ease and thus losing the feel of earlier episodes which generated enormous fear when you were faced with even one of these vile creatures. Did Telltale Games forget that it was the harrowing outcomes from your impossible decisions which provided a psychological onslaught on your soul? Because if not, then why did we have to sit through overly laboured scenes like that burial? 

To be fair, the end of episode 4 did leave a superb cliff hanger which left me willing to forgive the discretions of that episode. That was until I played episode 5.

Episode 5 was always going to be a difficult feat to pull off. However, I feel that Telltale Games dropped the ball here. Episode 4 was too long thanks to those action sequences and felt more bloated than a Boomer from Left 4 Dead.  Episode 5 overcorrected that by being far too short. The kidnapping cliff hanger was a huge disappointment and merely served to give you a dull summary of some of the decisions you made earlier on. There was also a lack of tough moral choices to make and the complete lack of robust gameplay in the series was especially highlighted in this episode, a sin which escaped scrutiny in previous episodes.  However, the most frustrating aspect of the episode was the feeling that the majority of those decisions you made over the last 15 hours or so were never meant to have the sort of impact you dreamt it would have on the story. It’s certainly not as unforgivable as Mass Effect 3 (Marauder Shields, we will NEVER forget you!) but given the compellingly amoral nature of the game, I had hoped for much better.

With all that said, I still really enjoyed The Walking Dead, especially the earlier episodes. The voice acting was of a high quality and the script had some truly powerful moments, some of which our resident blogger has already highlighted. The relationship between Lee and Clementine will go down as one of the greatest in video gaming history. Our resident blogger doesn’t have a heart of stone – Princess Peach is more of a man than he is. I, however, do possess a heart of stone, and I’m not afraid to admit to the tear that rolled down my cheek in those final 10 minutes of episode 5. Upon reflection on writing this blog, maybe that ending was incredible enough for me to forgive all the mistakes Telltale Games made in episodes 4 and 5.  Maybe.

All I can say is roll on Season 2.

At the end of The Walking Dead. (Possible Spoilers)

I finished the last episode of The Walking Dead last night. So eager was I to see how it ended, that even after an evening out, I downloaded it as soon as I walked in the front door. It was so good it inspired a rare late night gaming session in me. Then it inspired loss of sleep while I turned the whole thing over in my mind and tried to digest all that happened.

The Walking Dead is fiction of the highest order. Less a game, more a graphic novel whose plot and conversations you direct. Things only went downhill. There was never any reason to feel like a zombie slaying badass, like you do in Left4Dead. The Walking Dead never let you forget that the walkers used to be people, and I felt a pang of guilt with each one I bought down. The situation is never anything but dire in the Walking Dead. The oppressive atmosphere hung over every decision I made. And it was never as simple as good or bad. There was only bad or bad. Terrible or terrible. Every decision I made wound up being tempered by wanting to do right by Clementine.

Never before, have I felt so attached or protective over a videogame character. Clementine is a masterstroke. I saw and did monstrous things over the course of those five episodes. I stole food, murdered a man in anger and willingly dropped another to his death. These were my decisions, none of them were foisted upon me by the game. I ignored the alternatives and Lee and I had to live with the consequences. But seeing the look on Clementine’s face, each time she found out about these things really cut deep. You know what you're doing is wrong. Sometimes the things you do are even necessary, but seeing how Clementine reacts to them is really wrenching.

There was room for compassion in this crazy mixed up world. Lee and Kenny bonded, which is to say, Kenny and I bonded. I liked him, and when the time came, I couldn’t let him do a thing that no man should have to. So I shouldered the guilt and did it for him. We had each other’s backs for the whole game and despite disagreeing with him at some points, we were friends right to the end of the game.

The Walking Dead was an emotional rollercoaster. Actually, no, it wasn’t. There are highs and lows on a rollercoaster. The Walking Dead was an emotional cliff. Forever tumbling downwards, with no let up until the episode ended. There were moments of sudden and explosive violence between other characters that were so shocking that at one point I put the controller down and just said holy shit for five minutes while the scene played out. I wanted justice for what happened and did something pretty awful to make sure I got it.

If you have not played episode five, read no further. There are spoilers ahead.

The fifth episode in particular was one emotional low after another.  Seeing Lee slowly killing himself to get to Clementine was heart rending. Saving her did nothing to stop the sink ever downwards, because I knew what had to come next. If I didn’t have a heart of stone, I would have cried at that moment. Seeing Clementine in that state wasn’t part of the plan. All Lee wanted, all I wanted, was to make sure she was safe.

I worry for her future.