My top 5 games of 2012

Until these last couple of weeks, I have never really done many 'list' or 'top game' posts. That being said, I have actually enjoyed making these and looking back at my 'year in gaming', so to speak. It put me in a very reflective state (including the realization that this blog is over 3 years old now. I missed its birthday completely - but I got things started on 11/8/2009).

There are a lot of titles from this year I have not yet had a chance to play or play as extensively as I would have liked, and like my reviews these are simply a matter of preference. Halo 4 and Black Ops II are examples of games I will likely wind up playing next year. Guild Wars 2 has been awesome, but I have not had enough time with it to feel comfortable putting it in my top five.

I could not pick out a favorite single title from this year, so I will just leave it to a list with no order of preference to it. I picked only games released in 2012 and not ones that were excellent, but released previously and not played by me until 2012 (Skyrim for example).

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My favorite games of 2012 that you might not have played

It is easy to find room for the AAA titles like Diablo III, Mass Effect 3 or Black Ops 2. These games sell and in large numbers. Your friends and family pick them up and you game with them. I have a handful of games however, that most people I know just did not play and I thought they deserved some additional attention as 2012 comes to a close.

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Just a couple of RPG games - Kingdoms of Amular and Game of Thrones

I saw a couple of press release items from a couple of days ago.  I thought they made for interesting reads, so I figured with it being a slow weekend for me personally, I'd share with the rest of the class.  One is talk about Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning expansion and the other about Game of Thrones (which I just watched season 1 of on Bluray and loved).

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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - Xbox 360 Review

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a title has been in my sights ever since I stumbled onto it via trailer at IGN that I shared here.  It was a flashy trailer that caught my eye with its visual style and everything I saw about the fast-paced combat intrigued me.  I continued to follow it, posting about it here and there, until I finally got a chance to try the demo and share my impressions.

Well, this game turned into a pre-order for me at that point and I have had a lot of time to sit down and get to know this new fantasy RPG title over the last 100+ hours.  Before I get into the specific technical breakdown I usually do, I figure a game I have sunk this much time into deserves a bit more of an overview first.  One word really comes to mind for me when I think about KoA and describe it to others:

Dense

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Gaming thoughts 2/15/12 - Mass Effect 3, PS+ and more

Let me start off by saying I'm a tremendous fan of Mass Effects 1 & 2.  I have had some concerns about #3 simply because of the unbelievable expectations I think the game is going to face, ranging from the success of the last 2, to the excellent trailers, to the addition of multiplayer and events like the VGA's naming it most anticipated game of 2012.  Well, while my wife it out of town this week with her best friend and friend's kids at Disney World:

I was downloading and playing this:

Sadly, it was just the demo and not the actual game (which I have on pre-order for my 360 - collector's edition to boot).  That said?  I felt as though the demo was excellent.  It started you off with just a bit of back story, introduced some important characters, and let newcomers experience the conversation wheel used to hepl make decisions that sometimes greatly impact the plot and at other times just add a personal slant to the story.  

Then you are taken to a fairly tense battle scene later in the game, and given plenty of points to invest into your squad so you can get a feel for the leveling system including the branching skills.  AGain, I just love how heavily you can customize your experience.  Make no mistake, there is an RPG game at the heart of this title, but when the action starts, it's more Gears of War than Legend of Zelda.  The speed of the gunplay and the cover mechanics are fluid and tighter than ever.  In one sequence I charged into a trio of enemies, shooting one with my assault rifle just before reaching him, did a melee strike with my omniblade on another, and then swapped to my piston, meleeing the remaining guy.  He staggered back and I popped him with a headshot.  It was an exciting little sequence.

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Gaming thoughts 2/9/12 - Pistons and lots of gaming

So last Friday, my wife took me out to a basketball game - Pistons vs. Bucks.  Her perspective of it was more from the 90's night music and Vanilla Ice halftime show.  I wish I was making that up, but she has the (Internet archive link) proof here on her blog (and while this post is tame, some of her others?  Not so much - you've been warned).

For me?  There was a basketball game, and lots of throwback to the 90's Pistons, which was awesome.  Oh, and we wont the game too:

 

So that was fun.  This week?  Yeah - I get to go again.  My wife's gotten me even better seats to the Nets game (whom we beat last night away)

This has of course led me to playing countless hours of:

Yeah.   A lot of hours.  Just finished my first season with my created player.  This is without a doubt my favorite mode.  Franchise/association is cool too.  Online would be better if I knew more people who played it because I would rather just have a few friends w/ teams and not a full roster of people I don't know which makes getting games played a pain in the arse.

I've been pretty busy as well - I got that promotion, and have decided to hold off on the tv for now, but wound up getting a slew of new games.  The one I've been playing the most so far is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.  I know there's been some mixed reviews on this game, but so far I'm really enjoying it.  This + Skyrim does mean I'm not playing much else.  Oh, and NBA 2K12.  And some NBA Jam and Mario Kart... okay, so I'm playing a few games, and that's a quick list of the ones that come to mind, but I'm sure there's more.

The career mode in NBA 2K12 made me think though - what are the gaming 'activities' that chew up the largest amount of time?  Is it the online component to a FPS like Call of Duty or Battlefield?  Getting through seasons in a sports title (NFL?  Not as bad.  16 game regular season.  NBA?  82 games.  And that's not as bad as MLB...).  Grinding for experience in an RPG title? 

Being that I play a lot of different game genres, these were the 3 biggest 'time sinks' that jumped out at me, but of them I have to give the nod to a sports game's seasonal grind.  Don't get me wrong, I love it, but the trophies/acheivements are usually spread out in such a way that you spend forever getting them (make 5 All-Star games!  That means you're going to play over 350 games!  Get your created player to an 80 overall.  That could take 2 - 3 seasons.  And then there's the different modes like franchise, online, career...)  I think perhaps the trophies take much longer to get in most of these titles than in others.

A case could be made for FPS games, but the sense of progression I think breaks things up more, and you have different modes, maps - there's just a bit more variety.  In RPG's the grinding never really bugs me either, but it feels more incremental.  You get to a point in the game where you might grind a bit for a few hours.  I have no idea how many hours I spent getting through a season of NBA 2K12, but I'd guess at least 10.

I'll have to detail some of my new titles when they actually arrive and get to play them.  I will no doubt be plugging away heavily at Skyrim and Amular for the next week or two to try and wrap those up and review them soon.

What are you playing?  Any game types you feel have a really long, grind-like time-sink to them?  Anyone out there as a big of an NBA or NFL fan as me?  Let me know in the comments!

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Gaming Thoughts 1/19/12

So, I've had my hands in a ton of games over the last week, and I thought I would share some quick impressions here.

For one - I almost never download demos, but the clever tie-in between Kingdoms of Amalur and Mass Effect 3 where playing one opens up some items for the other appealed to me quite a bit.  Of course, those are two of the games I am most anticipating this year, and already have a reservation down on Amalur and will no doubt do the same for Mass Effect 3.

So, my quick impressions of Amular are overall pretty good.  The action moves along pretty nicely, and the visuals while a bit cartoony are still impressive nonetheless.  I may not have particularly loved the facial expression of my character when he first awakens, but I was quite taken with the lightening effects and vibrant colors.  There were a few notable glitches, specifically the audio doing odd things at times, but I've read several reports that state the dev team is aware of them and that they are fixed for the actual game.  The download size was 1.90 gigs on 360, so there's some beef behind it, but overall I enjoyed my run of it.  For those interested, I saw a few postings that Mass Effect 3 will go live with its demo on Valentine's Day.  I'll be playing it (don't judge me - my wife's out of town to be at Disney World with her best friend).

Next up - Final Fantasy XIII-2.  I'll preface this by saying I really did enjoy XIII and rated it pretty high, and this is more of the same, with more new items added.  I really enjoyed the demo.  I heard some people commenting that the action and camera focus were all over the place and that it was distracting, but I found it immersive.  It probably won't be a day 1 buy for me because the first title dropped in price quite a bit (you can find it for about $15 now) and because I have too many other games on my plate, but I suspect I'll be acquiring it by years' end.

Asura's Wrath is one of those titles that has struck me as quirky for some time, and I've been mildly curious about, but this game's demo did nothing for me really.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good either.  Maybe a rental or a borrow from a friend, but I doubt this title makes my cut this year as I still have entirely too many other titles to work through.

I've gotten my hands on a few new games of late too, especially for the 3DS.  My son bought Devil Survivor Overclocked, and so far really likes it.  I've picked up Star Fox 64 and Street Fighter 4, and already had been playing quite a bit of Dead or Alive 4, Mario Kart and Samurai Warriors.  I've enjoyed them all, and there will eventually be more reviews - but that's still a ways off.

I just finished my run of Dragon Age: Origins, and will likely have a re-review posted in the somewhat near future.  I've also been busy with Skyrim still.  Oh, and I recently acquired several handheld titles (not including the PlayStation Plus freebies like the minis and Back to the Future games) such as Bastion, Bloodrayne, Street Fighter III and Dungeon Defenders.

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