So 2012 has come and gone with nary a world-ending apocalypse. Despite that, things have been a little nuts for me what with changing jobs and moving. The new digs are nice but the new gig is rough. I was still able to get some quality gaming in which went a little something like this...
Star Wars: The Old Republic ***
I did play this for a substantial time this year and I was hoping that it would age well. Unfortunately it didn't as you can read in my lengthy review a couple posts back. Now that it's free to play I may revisit it at some point but I haven't yet.
Borderlands ****
I'm usually late to the party with shooters but my involvement with BL2 spurred me on to finally check out the original. I have to say that I'm sad that I missed it when it was new. It's pretty much a straight up shooter but with a funky style and a dark humor that really sets it apart. I really miss the humor of the, say, late 80s to early 90s Sierra games from the Bad Old Days(TM) and Borderlands kicked the point home.
Mount & Blade: Warband ***
Yeah, I reviewed this one last year too but I played a lot of it this year. I finally got to the end of the game but having had a second run at it I got a better feel for the mechanics and how the AI was constructed. I still think some of the original worked better than the sequel but can still recommend it for anyone who wants to see how mounted combat should be done.
Endless Space ****
I love 4X games but they generally don't get a lot of press. Endless Space takes a lot of what I liked out of GalCiv and wraps it in a new shiny package without a lot of the bad stuff that didn't work. When I played it around release there were quite a few balance issues and the interface was in places clunky. Overall, however, it was a lot of fun and had some fantastic music to boot.
Mass Effect 3 ****
I am an unabashed Mass Effect fan. The first installment while being not the best of games had a fantastic story not unwilling to dive into some of the hardercore sci-fi topics. The second traded a lot of story for gameplay so I was a little worried about the last chapter in Shepard's story. The game unfortunately came out while I was at GDC and I moved right after that so didn't get to see what all the uproar about the ending was. I mean, this is Bioware, right? They can write good stuff, right? As it turns out, we apparently can't trust them with an ending. Lots of people have said lots of things about this a lot better than I can. Mass Effect 3 is a fantastic game and it's easy to lose sight of that given how utterly the last ten minutes of the game ends. I give them props for sticking to their guns throughout the entire backlash but honestly, they could have picked better guns. The extended cut helps substantially but this is NOT how you end an epic trilogy.
FTL: Faster Than Light ****
This is a pretty high production value indie game which was sold to me as "roguelike meets dwarf fortress in space". I don't think I'd go that far though it does have elements of both. What it does have is some very polished 8-bit style art and some mesmerizing midi-style music that wrap a solid design. It's a fast game, one that you can get through in a couple hours but it can be brutal at times and it's not uncommon to get to the last boss without a chance of success. That's my only real reservation from giving it *****--it's a little too old-skool roguelike in its eagerness to hit you over the head with bad RNG picks and utter failure.
Guild Wars 2 *****
I never played the original Guild Wars so I wasn't exactly following GW2's development. In fact, I probably wouldn't have played it at all if someone hadn't mentioned that if you pre-order you can get into the beta. Thus I ended up with probably the best sixty gaming bucks I've ever spent (plus another $80 in their cash store plus another $200 in hardware). GW2 is easily the best game I've played in 2012 and probably best in the last five years. The game isn't without flaws (no game is) but the majority of it is so well done that I think it sets the new bar for gaming excellence in the MMO space. I'll almost certainly have a longer write up at some point--once I can tear myself away from it.
In Review
It might seem like a light year for gaming but it really wasn't mostly because M&B and GW2 got long shifts. I didn't get to all the stuff I wanted to (Serious Sam, Deus Ex, Portal 2, Halo 4 and XCom among others) but quality game time was had nonetheless. Here's hoping that 2013 is as good.
