In doing research for my previous post on my top ten games of 2012, I pretty much ended up going through and replaying every game I played this year. This ended up being quite a lot of games, and I spent days in internal debate trying to narrow down ten.
As the release of new games and general gaming news cycle is pretty slow these days, I thought it might be nice to share the list I had cooked up before narrowing it down to a top ten. All of these games are fantastic and I recommend them heartily, even if they did not quite make my top ten for various reasons.
Again, I would reiterate that an interesting thing about this year was the overall poor quality of the triple-A releases. Diablo 3 was an astounding, albeit foreseeable, disappointment; Mass Effect 3 was mired with controversy; Call of Duty was predictable sequel with little innovation; Borderlands 2, and I know people who will disagree with me, fell to all of the trappings of its predecessor, and had a humor and sense of style that rubbed me the wrong way. Almost all of my favorite games of this year were indie or from small studios.
It is yet to be seen if this is a case of standard development methodologies changing, perhaps being an early prologue to the rise of Kickstarter and crowd-funding, or if it is simply an aberration.
Regardless, this are my "really good but not quite top-ten" games of 2012.
Tribes: Ascend
My favorite shooter this year, despite some problems that arise out of their free-to-play model with public games and general balance issues. Skis, jetpacks, and Spinfuser shots all make this one of the best shooters of the last several years.
Awesomenauts
A 2D platformer/Dota-like game. It is extremely casual, with players able to jump into and out of games easily -- and let me tell you, that is SO refreshing for this genre. Takes what makes mobas fun and successfully cuts out the often stressful nature of its extremely competitive forerunners.
Botanicula
I love point-and-clicks, and this one shines with amazing music, an amazing world, and well-designed puzzles. This game is absolutely charming, and a must for anyone who is a fan of the genre.
Dustforce
Probably my all-time favorite precision-platformer. Warning: it is impossibly difficult and infuriating at times, but that's why I love it. The ability to easily view replays from the scoreboard and the tight controls really make this game shine for me. It also has a great soundtrack and visuals.
Crusader Kings II
This is pretty much Grand Strategy porn. If you're unfamiliar, it's sort of like Total War but it emphasizes political intrigue and religion over pure warfare. It's a niche genre, but the amount that they streamlined in this iteration is fantastic and I think makes for one of the best Grand Strategy games ever.
Legend of Grimrock
Very old school dungeon crawler with some great puzzle elements. It's essentially a modern incarnation of those very old, DnD type RPGs of the 80's and 90's. On top of that they added mod support and Steam Workshop integration?! Awesome!
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Not much to say other than it has a great matchmaking system, all the old game modes, and some extra stuff that introduces the new player to the game gently.
FTL: Faster Than Light
Another "impossibly difficult" -- this is a rogue-like space combat that is as addictive as it is difficult (and sometimes frustrating). It exhibits what is fun about rogue-likes with modern standards while streamlining many aspects. I cannot stress how addictive this game is, and how many times I've shut it down in frustration only to fire it back up again five minutes later.
Dishonored
I am a stealth game purist, and I have big problems with this game. That said, what this game does amazingly well is present you with a problem to solve (usually in the form of murder) and then gives you pretty much free reign to solve it any conceivable way you can. Plays like a combination of Thief, Bioshock, and Dark Messiah, and even has some Half-Life 2 vibes (the art director worked on both games). I only have minor criticisms of this game: it's too short, and the ability to flip out and murder everyone at any time takes away from some of the tension pure stealth games like Thief had. Still, one of the best action games (I refuse to classify it as a "stealth" game) out there, even if I do not think it is necessarily better than any of the games it is trying to emulate.
Natural Selection 2
A multiplayer RTS/FPS hybrid with asymmetric gameplay. Probably the most compelling, original shooter this year; and even though I prefer the shooting and movement mechanics of Tribes, this game unquestionably does team strategy and base defense/destruction better -- probably the best in any multiplayer shooter ever, in fact. Play as Marines or Aliens, each of which offer a radically different experience.
Far Cry 3
Although I initially thought the "Skyrim with guns" tagline was a bit silly, it's... kind of accurate. Instills a great sense of freedom and atmosphere while avoiding the pitfalls made by its predecessor. My only complaint is that I wish there were more "hardcore" survival elements, sort of like the STALKER games, because a lot of the framework is there (hunting, etc.) but the game sort of felt too arcade-y. Still, it's an incredible experience and one those games where you'll look up and wonder where those last 4 hours went.
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
This is what I wish the Zelda series would have turned into: it has a challenging, fast-paced combat system that is absolutely sublime, good puzzles and exploration, and a good storyline, balancing maturity with that quirky Japanese sense of adventure. This very well could have been in my top ten list, but it is a port of an older game, so I thought it best to exclude it on those grounds.
This is mostly due to the fact that I am currently writing a zombie themed visual novel. Yes, I'm serious. You play a zombie. In a visual novel.
generic_zombie_hentai.jpg
No, just kidding, it won't be animu-style, I promise.
I am unsure whether or not I will post updates on the project on this blog, or create a new one -- regardless, I will let you know in the not-too-distant-future™.
He is like a fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail
- Abel, on the writing style of Carl Friedrich Gauss
I apologize in advance for the unprofessional and poorly-argued claims I'm about to make.
Predictions are ultimately bullshit, especially mine, which are the product of intuition and a vague sense of how things "feel" at a given time, and I'm not going to make an incredible amount of effort to justify my claims. I am probably wrong. I understand that.
That said, the crystal ball inside my brain pulls me to the conclusion that the general future of Blizzard is relatively dire. I realize that I say this despite their record-breaking Q3 earnings [1]. I understand they are doing well -- now. But I am personally extremely skeptical they are well positioned to sustain their growth in the future.
Starcraft 2 is not competing well against League of Legends in the eSports scene [2]
A large amount of consumer distrust since the botched release of Diablo 3 [3]
World of Warcraft has been their cash cow for years now, however subscribers are declining, or at best, have plateaued [4]; and they are poorly positioned to recapture that market without a commensurate product in development
The unnanounced Titan MMO will most likely be a social media MMO, played through a variety of mediums, including the PC, cellphone, Facebook, etc.
The first two points are more or less uncontroversial, so I will not go into great detail about them.
To the extent that we can get subscription data at all, it would appear that WoW is, very slowly, mind you, descending into the twilight of its life cycle. This is extraordinarily bad for Blizzard, as it accounts for a huge percentage of their revenue -- and how, exactly are they going to transition into a post-WoW world? The Diablo franchise is marred, I would argue irreparably, with a plummeting user base and bad reviews. Starcraft is competing futilely against League of Legends in the eSports scene, though Blizzard shares a lot of the blame for this, for locking down tournaments through Battle.Net (no LAN) and telling Kespa -- who share a huge amount of responsibility for building the Korean eSports scene to begin with -- to essentially go fuck themselves.
It seems relatively clear that post-WoW Blizzard has attempted to introduce methods that continually return revenue after launch. Starcraft 2 was pushed hard in the eSports scene and the draconian DRM was used to force tournaments to give Blizzard a cut of the advertisement revenue, which unsurprisingly turned eSports coordinators away from the game. Diablo 3 launched with an in-game real money auction house, from which Blizzard takes a cut of every transaction, and the game was clearly designed to promote its use; however, by some accounts more people are playing Diablo 2 than Diablo 3, and the feature is almost universally criticized as an odd, even exploitative, pyramid scheme. From an outsider's perspective, neither of these schemes seem to have worked out.
So under the assumption that both the Diablo and Starcraft franchises are under-preforming as cash cows, how will Blizzard sustain themselves under the inevitable decline of World of Warcraft? How will Chris Metzen afford his swimming pools full of cocaine?
Their last conceivable hope is their next-generation MMO, codenamed "Titan." For reference, this is approximately what we know about Titan [5]:
In-game Advertisements (possibly free to play)
Won't compete with World of Warcraft
New IP
Sci-fi, possibly set in near future
Casual
Now what do I think Titan will be? We don't really know, but I enjoy making predictions for posterity and to rub everyone's' faces in it if I'm right.
So after reading what we know about Project Titan and the general trends and rhetoric we hear from gaming executives, I think that Titan will essentially be something like Google's Ingress, with an expanded client for playing on a PC (and possibly console). Thus,
Some form of it will be playable on cellphones, tablets, etc.
It will have heavy social media integration, and you can play some form of it over Facebook, in public, etc.
I do think there will be a "main game" that is on PC; however, you will be encouraged to play it outside for more rewards
Possibly some kind of real money auction house, as it is widely believed that Diablo 3 was the test for it
When I say you can "play it in public," I mean that quite literally. I think some objectives will require you to physically go out, scan QR codes or something, play minigames against anonymous people in your vicinity on your phone, etc. -- all so that you can "play the game" in real life
Essentially, I think it will be a collection of flash and cellphone games distributed over a ton of platforms that you can play around town, over Facebook, will feature a trading house, and will all integrate into a relatively minimal main PC game. It will basically be Ingress, as I mentioned earlier; in fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if it had the same premise and setting: walking around and playing minigames to "hack" things.
Here's the trailer for Ingress, in comparison.
Regardless, I do believe that the future of Blizzard rests on the success of this game. We shall see how it works out -- and it will be very interesting to see how well the upcoming Starcraft 2 expansion sells, as well as the Diablo 3 expansion, if one is even made, which wouldn't surprise me, given the poor state of the game.
