Game of The Year 2012, FH forum edition

[Thorondor123]

The year is almost over and people seem to love scores, rankings and lists. This variation of GoTY comes from The Game Station podcast. There are four categories, and everyone can nominate three games in each category. The categories are:
- Best game
- Worst game
- Biggest surprise
- Biggest disappointment

PS. This is, obviously, for games that were released on 2012, and you have actually played.

---

Here are my nominations.

Best game of 2012
-Dishonored (PC) by Arkane Studios.
First person stealth game set in Victorian-esque steam whel-punk themed city. Really interesting story, amazing characters and beautiful environment. Visually the game is stunning. Graphical fidelity is nothing spectacular, but the watercolour-like art style is unique and one of the greatest I've ever seen. Bonus points for good animation quality.
Stealth gameplay is up there with Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the supernatural powers work almost flawlessly, enabling you to do all sorts of combinations and manoeuvres. Unfortunately the game lacks in non-lethal skills and equipment.

- Natural Selection 2 (PC) by Unknown Worlds Entertainment
 Team based FPS/RTS hybrid where teams of aliens and and marines fight each other on dynamic battlegrounds. Unique PC shooter. Old school shooter nonetheless, without any unnecessary unlocks and stats spam.

- Tribes: Ascend (PC) by Hi-Rez Studios
Fast. Difficult. PC shooter.

Worst game of 2012

I don't think that I can nominate anything.  I really didn't play anything so bad that it would deserve a nomination.

Biggest surprise of 2012
There were two games that I didn't look forward to nor had any interest in before I tried them. Both of them turned out to be brilliant.

- Tribes: Ascend (PC) by Hi-Rez Studios

- Awesomenauts (PC) by Ronimo Games
DoTA/MOBA style platformer. Werid characters, players are tolerable unlike in other MOBA games.

Biggest disappointment of 2012
- Mass Effect 3 (PC) by BioWare
To be exact, the last 10 minutes of Mass Effect 3. This is one of my all time favourite game series. The story, the world and the characters that only BioWare can create.. all nullified by the utter stupidity of the ending. No matter what decisions you made in the earlier games, you still get the same shitty ending full of paradoxes, illogicalities and stupidity.

[LHeureux]

- Best game

Planetside 2

Fresh gameplay, loads of fun with friends and outfits and quite a good community for once!

- Worst game

Hitman : Absolution

Was supposed to get Hitman, got Splinter Cell instead. Nope.

- Biggest surprise

Dishonored

Normally I'm not into steam punk and the assassin gameplay is not too much of my style but this game was so polished and the gameplay so good with an original world that I can't let it be ignored.

- Biggest disappointment

Tribes : Ascend

This game.... This game had so much potential but the devs completely destroyed the Tribes feel it had at the start in BETA by introducing way too much automatic rifles and hitscan weapons. The physics are also quite ridiculous and the map design is sometimes really a let down.

The OPness of Snipers and non-tribes weapons made a HUGE chunk of the player base leave, now it's almost a dead game and Hi-Rez are pumping cash with their new game "SMITE".

Really sad to see Tribes in this state, I hope a better studio picks up the franchise and do a proper Tribes.

[Biiviz]

Best game of 2012
-Farcry 3


Haven't played anything else besides FH2 and Dota2.

[Kalkalash]

Best Game
-Farcry 3
Just a superb game which is one of the best games I've ever played. Amazing environment, great gun handling and sounds and a nice story. It kept pulling me back in to the game constantly and you just didn't want to stop.

Also, it has poker.

-Crusader Kings 2
A must have for every strategy player. The game creates strong connections between the player and the characters he guides in a rich and detailed medieval theme. A game where you make up stories in your head for the people around you.

Worst Game
-Medal of Honor: Warfighter
There are no words to describe how horrible the game was. Never made it past that second level.

Biggest Surprise
-Hotline Miami
Didn't think of it as anything out of the ordinary until I bought it from Steam sales. A nice game, with a fresh idea and a retro graphical style. The game brought hours of enjoyment and blood splattered mayhem.

Biggest Disappointment
-Assassin's Creed III
A big let down. I loved the first Assassin's Creed, the second ones were mediocre and this was just rubbish. It is a shame that the series has gone down like this. The story is interesting with all that conspiracy stuff but it carries itself on so slowly. After 4 hours I gave up on it as the story still was very tutorial-like. The game also has numerous other problems such as

Bad controls: I played ACI on both 360 and PC, ACII on PC and they handled fine with all forms of controls. I'm playing ACIII on a 360 pad and I'm constantly jumping in the wrong direction or the control just feel very unresponsive. Sure, the predecessor had their fair share of the problems but they weren't as bad as now. For example, outside the actual tutorial, I haven't been able to use someone as a shield against bullets at all. Every time I get the prompt to do it, nothing happens. I mash x and all I get is a hail of bullets to the face.

Stealth: The are several sequences where the game enforces you to use stealth and sneak around (Otherwise it's mission failure). The problem is, it's not a stealth game. Splinter Cells are stealth games, Hitmans are stealth games, Assassin's Creed is not. It doesn't have the necessary mechanics that you need in order to use stealth effectively. Sure, it has blending, but that's not stealth. It's blending. You can't crouch, you can't hug walls, you can't change clothes or hide in various closets. All you do is jump in haystacks. The game is about assassinations and being sneaky, and do note that being sneaky is not the same as sneaking.

I still have the game installed on my harddrive but considering the numerous deaths, mission failures and leaps off rooftops within just four hours, I doubt I'll continue it. I'd like to know how the story ends but for fuck's sake I'm not going through the pain of actually playing the game just to find that out.

[Torenico]

I haven't played many 2012 titles but, the biggest disappointment was Pro Evolution Soccer 2013.

[THeTA0123]

Best game
PLANETSIDE 2
Planetside 2 gave me hope back in the world of videogames. I had more fun the past 2 months with this game then i ever had with BF3 from the day it got released

WORST game
Medal of Honour warfigther
What-a-load-of-Crap. There is no inovation, there is nothing new. Its repetive gameplay that i have seen for the past years since modern whorefare. The game is terribly made, the AI is horrible...Just one big pile of SHIT

Biggest Surpise
Dishonored
I have only played it for 5 seconds and i find this game spectacular already. I must free time from my PS2 schedule!


Biggest Dissapointment

Battlefield 3 DLC's

in the beginning i was pumped. Then came close quarters and it was......decent

Then came armoured kill. it was decent but no 5 new vehicle unlocks.
Then i see aftermath and End game will be pathethic DLC's. The promised new weapons got quietly removed. A new game mode and a few new maps. I am bitterly dissapointed

Also=
-SWTOR

[Wulfburk]

- Best game
Crusader Kings 2
Great game, way better than M2TW or any other game i have played in thaT era, the gameplay is great, the musics are awesome, and it is awesome to roleplay with it.
- Worst game
Mass Effect 3
See the reasons on the Biggest Disappointment category...
- Biggest surprise
War Thunder

Great ww2 plane MMO, waaaaaaay better than World of Warplanes, better graphics, better controls, and it has BRITS, unlike WoWP.
- Biggest disappointment
Mass Effect 3
If you want to kill a great series, this is the way to do it, i was a Mass Effect fanboy, ME1 was my favorite game of all time, ME2 was also great, but the first one was just pure epicness, when i get it i was kinda sceptic mostly because of the ugly boxshot, but man that game was great.
The idea, since the beginning of the first game was that you had choices to make, and those choices would effect the end game, that idea was explored in the end of the first game, and then later in the end of the second game at the suicide mission, but when you play ME3... all comes down, EA bought bioware before ME2, but they coudnt touch it that much, they made it more mainstream than the first one, but still it was good..

Now ME3.... really, that is the most non roleplay self proclaimed roleplaying game ever, At the end you have no choice, the dialogs were stupid, they even butchered the Paragon and Renegade actions. I remeber at this mission the samurai ninja guy (a really irritating and stupid character, no one will miss him) was going to kill Shepard, and the renegade action icon apeared, i didnt wanted to die, and even though i am paragon i used it and killed the guy. THEN i find out that if i had done nothing, i would have killed him as well. IN THE SAME WAY, i was like... wtf.

Im not gonna lie, i usually pirate games, but when the game is good i buy it through Steam/Origin. I pirated and then later bought Battlefield 2(bought because of FH2), Mass Effect 1/2, ETW and actually most of the 40 or so games in my Steam Account, even though Mass Effect 1 and 2 were singleplayer games, and even though i finished 4 times ME1 and 3 times ME2 on their pirated versions, i bought both games on Steam. they deserved to be bought, Bioware deserved to have their money. But that wont happen with ME3.... I finished the first playthrough and that was it, no more. I had to wait a few months to get to like ME1 and ME2 again, what was the point of playing those games now? Well after a few months i created a new character on ME1 and took it to ME2, great nostalgia, but wont play ME3 again.

STAY AWAY FROM ANYONE WHO LIKES ME3!

[Musti]

The only games released in 2012 that i played were (sadly) mostly indie games (Imma hipstah!), so it kinda looks like this:

Best Game:

Faster Than Light:Pure awesomness of a game, Being a captain of a space ship is pretty awesome, i liked the graphics style, and the music. And it has a rising number of great mods.

Worst game:
WarZ: It's an alpha, sold as a regular game, ridiculous price, buggy, terrible graphics, and for the most part incredibly boring and annoying, worst thing ever.

Biggest surprise
Call of Duty Blops2: I expected it to be absolutely horrible, medicore piece of COD crap. It's not, It may not be 100% fresh, but for a COD it's much better than  expected, also Nazi Zombies, fun as always.

Biggest disappointment
WarZ: I really hoped for a great zombie survival game "DayZ but better". And it's terrible, I really wish for a proper game of this type.

Honorable mentions go to: Diablo 3, and Jagged Alliance Back in Action, for totally screwing up years of waiting for a sequel, JABiA though might be saved by mods, but not yet. Guess I'll have to wait some more

[ajappat]

Best game

Planetside 2
I don't think this needs much explanations.

DayZ
I had to drop this here, even if it's not actual game. I sunk countless hours into DayZ and I'm not only one. It started whole new genre and is being developed into real game.

Worst game

Can't think any games for now, maybe I'll update this later.

Biggest surprise

Awesomenauts
I wasn't really waiting anything from this game. Turned out to be quite good.

Biggest disappointment

XCOM Enemy Unknown
Yet to get this game. I was kind of waiting this, but more they revealed about the game, more worried I became. Game wasn't too well recieved and I desided to wait for sales, as it didn't seem worth 50€. Now steam delivered lousy 33% off and I still don't feel like getting it for 33€.

[DLFReporter]

...
Biggest disappointment

XCOM Enemy Unknown
Yet to get this game. I was kind of waiting this, but more they revealed about the game, more worried I became. Game wasn't too well recieved and I desided to wait for sales, as it didn't seem worth 50€. Now steam delivered lousy 33% off and I still don't feel like getting it for 33€.

Woha! You haven't even played it and are calling it the biggest disappointment?!
It has a metacrtic score of 89 and a user rating of 8.0. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/xcom-enemy-unknown
That's almost as good as it gets for a reboot.
Do yourself a favour and buy it, play it on classic and then come back here. You will thank me!

[Thorondor123]

I thought it was obvious that one can only nominate games that they have played.

[ajappat]

But I was disappointed even before getting it 

[Fuchs]

Best Game

Crusader Kings II; the best game I got this year. It was steep to get into but the stories and scenarios created by the game are absolutely amazing. The historical dynasties and all, I love it. And the Game of Thrones mod makes it even better. The only negative thing; all the DLC's. I keep buying them but a lot of this should've been with the first release or free; like the dynasty shields/faces.

Worst Game

Unavailable; I didn't buy/play any regrets this year. Been very careful with buying games and, honestly, don't  pirate so no worst games. But from a spectator position; The War Z certainly looks like the biggest scam and disappointment of 2012.

Biggest Surprise

Day Z; when it was still young a good friend of mine sent me a link to this. I tried it and was hooked. The thrill this game gave me, the choices, the adrenaline rush and pure joy I experienced. This little project turned into something massive and is in my opinion the greatest surprise of gaming of this year. I can't wait for the stand alone version.

Biggest Disappointment

Unavailable; I am starting to sound boring but I had no disappointments this year when it comes to gaming. No wasted money, no let downs.

[Steel_Lion_FIN]

...
Biggest disappointment

XCOM Enemy Unknown
Yet to get this game. I was kind of waiting this, but more they revealed about the game, more worried I became. Game wasn't too well recieved and I desided to wait for sales, as it didn't seem worth 50€. Now steam delivered lousy 33% off and I still don't feel like getting it for 33€.

Well have a look at this: ShackTacs Beagles XCom Ironman Impossible LP
If won't make you get impressed by the game, then I don't know what will.

[Surfbird]

I just have a Big surprise and Best game at the same time which is also DayZ

Well it's also the only "game" which was released in 2012 that I have played. I am usually just buying specific titles nowadays and stick to the games I already own. So only the fact that I got it comparably fast means that it was probably awesome to me

Anyway, DayZ was so much fun to get into. The whole situation, being a new mod and playing a very simplified game at an early stage was awesome. All that bugs, hackers and unstable servers did not stop me to love it. Spent weeks of playing it way too much daily with a bunch of friends. This was one of the most awesome online gaming expereinces I ever had and my personal favourite of 2012 along with starting to play FH2 again