PS3

Still Shamelessly Crushing on Future Trunks

HIGH Seeing all of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai's story mode in bright, shiny HD; Reversible cover art!

LOW Seeing Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3's boring story mode in flat, static HD; Cheap AI.

WTF The AI abuses the crap out of the fact that combat starts when "FIGHT" appears, not when it fades like most other fighters—cheap first hits for everyone!

So in the last post, you saw my top ten games of 2012. However, I think the last twelve months were fabulous for gaming overall. It seemed as though there were a neverending stream of titles that ranged from "pretty good" to "pretty great,"and I never had much trouble finding something that was worthwhile.

Extra Credits comes with another interesting game design breakdown. It is, as they readily admit, a bit heavy in game theory, but being aware of this aspect of game creation can go a long way toward a gamer understanding how limiting our current genres actually are. We might also see how limited our game creators are and why some titles simply miss being that breakout hit.

Goes to 11? More like 14.

HIGH Sasha. Also, Sasha.

LOW Not realizing there was an elevator behind the tentacle.

WTF The "red eyes" are never sufficiently explained.

2011 (not a typo) was an odd year. Its general theme seemed to be games that I considered good (such as Portal 2, L.A. Noire, and Batman: Arkham City) getting incredible amounts of praise, to the point that I would end up being the voice of dissent on games I actually liked. Hell, at one point somebody gave Batman: Arkham City a 6 stars out of 5. Now, people liking games more than I do is perfectly fine and not all that uncommon, but this happened constantly throughout 2011 for almost every AAA game, and it left me wondering what had happened to critical discussion.

Something interesting I noticed this year was a trend of push-back against "choice" games in which the player did not get to control every outcome. The two biggest examples which spring to mind are, of course, The Walking Dead and Mass Effect 3.

Without fail, every single person I've ever asked about Damnation said it was utter trash, but the box was so intriguing and the subject matter (Steampunk/Wild West/Civil War/Robots/Magic) was just too much up my alley to ignore. I think I got it for something like $4, and at the time that I picked it up, the clerk literally told me that I shouldn't buy it.

Another year, another breakdown of the year's best games…according to me. Before writing this list, I went back to my archive and looked over what I'd said in years past. The funny thing is that while plenty of folk were saying that the "big" games disappointed in 2012, I also found that to be true in 2011 and 2010. Perhaps the trend is becoming more noticeable now, but in hindsight, it definitely seems to be a trend that's been happening for a while.

Identity Crisis

HIGH Blistering down a sunset highway at almost 200mph.

LOW Hurtling straight into a divider at almost 200mph.

WTF Where is the start menu?!

When I think back to my 20-something self, during the 16-bit era, I remember how starved for video game information I was. We had monthly magazines to keep us in the loop back then, and information was relatively limited. "Oh, this game looks cool!" I would think to myself, but after reading a few paragraphs and seeing a couple of images, that was it.