2012 "of the year" awards Part II

2012 Worst Ending to a Trilogy

2012 "Of the Year" awards Part 1

2012's 2009 Game finished in 2012

The Short Pier: Call of Duty Elite (Elite Harder)

Abandoning the paid subscription model of Elite Ver. 1.0, Elite 2.0 is free to COD: Black Ops 2 players with MW3 player’s subscriptions extended into 2013 at no charge, but also with no carry over of data or persistence. Everyone starts fresh in Elite 2.0 with the intent to clearly draw players away from last year’s release.


Other than not exploding on arrival as the service did at launch last (and leaving the team to battle fires for months) Ver. 2.0 is iteration on the service with a vital exception: No DLC included.

Number-crunchers in the bowels of Activision seem to have realized the only value proposition in Elite, i.e. what consumers are willing to pay for, is map packs, and they have once again reverted to an a la carte model with a twist. Like so many other games, a “season’s pass” can be purchase at a slight discount. The 360 exclusive release window is still in place though, so 360 players will have access to maps in advance of other platforms. However, Elite subscribers will not get the head start at the content they had last year and once again all map buyers are created equal.

With early reports (or lack thereof) of Blops 2 underperforming overall MW3 which overall underperformed Blops, the bloom may finally be off the COD rose. If that is the case, Elite may vanish as a service altogether by next year, leaving only the opportunity to make all DLC subscription based, rather than a la carte, as the COD franchise sinks into over-exploited diminishing returns.

Honorable Discharge: Dishonored (360)

I didn’t know if I liked Dishonored until the last third of the game. Leveraging the Unreal Engine, and set to the default brightness settings as directed in the initial startup, Dishonored is a washed-out low resolution mess. Individual pixels can be discerned within groups of shaded art making up a wall in a mess of greys and browns. I dropped the brightness down a few notches to create deep black shadows, hiding the transitional colors.

The art style is distinctive and inspired, but initial off-pointing. Thick angular extremities taper towards the body, with odd features over-emphasized as they jut from a character’s head. Turn of the century architecture of brick and glass reaches for the gloomy sky as steampunk technology inspired by a world run on whale oil provides energy weapons and barriers. A terrible plague burdens the city/state of Dunwall, leaving the poor to be dumped into quarantine zones as they transform into walking shuddering wretches that vomit black clouds on the unwary.

Playing as Corvo, the titular bodyguard framed for the death of the body he was guarding, Dishonored initially guides the player through a linear path of escape. Only as Corvo mutely joins a merry band of insurgents within a hub level of sorts does the game open up. Environments are reused to good effect though the scale of the game seems small until the final map, a sprawling island fortress. Until that point, four or five of the base levels are visited at least twice, allowing Corvo to stretch any newly acquired abilities gather along the way.

Blink is a fundamental necessity in Dishonored and as a mechanism fixes the single largest issue facing first-person platforming, traversal. Functioning as a nearly instantaneous teleport, Blink allows Corvo to zoom from perch to perch, ascending or descending the environment at will. Only the highest heights are unreachable, though the indicator of what is scalable can often be confusing. Other abilities include stopping time and possessing animals and people, and all of them can be leveled by gather charms and runes within the environments. More a scavenger hunt than the chore many games make of collectibles, it offers opportunity for multiple play-throughs, as does upgradable equipment. Upgrade paths taken can determine possible strategies, but this concept is not communicated well by the game. Only by finishing it does one fully realize the depth of the paths not taken.

What is unfortunate about Dishonored is the empty shell of a narrative that is offered. Borrowing from Bioshock 2, a surrogate daughter learns from how Corvo conducts himself in the world. Play as a violent murderer, killing everything in sight and the girl becomes ruthless in her world view. Practice mercy and stealth, she become benevolent. An excellent mechanic is robbed entirely of meaning as there is no emotional connection to the girl or to any character in the game. Drowning in bad writing delivered in a vacuum by bored or confused celebrity voices, Dishonored is done a disservice, rendering the game an exercise in strategy rather than an experience to become immersed in.

Heady with upgraded powers I raced through the final moments of the game, skipping an environment entirely and accidentally triggering a scripted event. I chased the event and when presented with an ultimatum I simply executed a multi-power combo that resulted in the enemy killing himself literally in a blink. By this point the game I was so highly leveled the final encounter was a trifle, and that is a shame.

Dishonored is a fine successor to Thief and Deus Ex, offering player agency, and open environmental puzzles but is ultimately hollow.

You say you want a revolution: Darksiders & Darksiders 2 (360)

When I last spoke of Darksiders, I was preparing myself to re-engage with this enormous game, starting anew on the 360 after abandoning the PS3 to a horrible spider-boss. A horrible, horrible spider-boss.

I had forgotten how far I had made it into the game when I rounded to that point again a full 20 hours into a 35 hour game. With a lowered difficulty and a deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics (and a youtube video or two) as well as some minor experience with Dark Souls, recognizing and avoiding the boss patterns was easier this time around, but still frustrating.

Darksiders is very much a collage of gaming’s greatest hits, wrapped in comic book inspired art and story. War, one of the four Horsemen, is tricked into a battle that devastates Earth and destroys humanity, despite the Seventh Seal remaining unbroken. Heaven and Hell use the ruined planet as a battleground as War is resurrected and sent, much-diminished, to set things right. A ghastly specter is chained to his wrist functioning as a guide through the game and a narrative driver, pushing War through the story.

Essentially nothing more than a series of fetch quests, Darksiders embraces whole-heartedly it’s homage of Zelda/Castlevania style RPG’s stitched to God of War style combat. As abilities unlock, previous areas become more accessible, allowing for more abilities to unlock. Homage becomes flat-out theft when blue-orange portals appear in the late game, allowing War to traverse increasing complex puzzles without incorporating Portal’s more sophisticated mechanics. Like most of the lifts in the game, the idea is sound, the implementation is unpolished.

Despite its Frankenstein nature, Darksiders results in far more than the sum of its parts. The combat is endlessly entertaining, as are the increasing abilities including a hookshot. The story is compelling enough to recommend finishing the game and while some of the boss fights are brutally pointless the final battle is extremely satisfying, especially as it leads to an epic ending promising so much more to come…

…a promise Darksiders II fails to address much less keep.

Told concurrently with Darksiders, DII feels like do-over, an attempt to make the game originally planned but not built. The narrative is empty as little is done to tie the two games together other than the story’s initial spark: Death seeks to clear War of blame in the destruction as earth.

Playing the games back to back was a revelatory and unsettling experience. Without the separation of time between them, the differences are stark. Darksiders had an overly complex and plodding menu system, while the menus in D II are direct and functional, without any style. This clarity is much needed, as D II is literally an RPG, combining the GoW combat with Prince of Persia traversal and Diablo style damage and loot.

Unlike the first game, weapons are named and given stats, and leveling occurs both at the character and the weapon level. Cursed weapons are rare, and can be fed other weapons to level them further. In an embarrassment of riches, the economy of the game is insanely generous, and I finished with nearly $500,000 unused. Leveling weapons becomes unnecessary as there is always a better weapon not far away.

Floating hit points flare off everything, muddling the screen as abilities animations pop off filling the world with sparkly effects. There were moments where literally nothing was visible but smears of color and numbers in group or boss battles.

Fetch quests dominate the game, and Death is virtually impotent against the forces of these worlds, to the point that the character himself voices his annoyance with being lead around by the nose.

Graphically denser, D II improves on the art style with far more impressive and expressive animations and a far more vibrant color palette. Each world is massive and MMO like, but eventually funnels down into dark dungeons and linear paths. Abilities are unlocked, but back-tracking is far less encouraged than in Darksiders, including a throw-back level on a destroyed earth. Improvements are far more apparent in this familiar backdrop as this earth is far denser with detail, as a back-drop to a Gears of War third person shooter inspired section.

Darksiders II is iteration not evolution of the series, essentially a retelling or addendum to the original game. With an ending that is entirely meaningless to the larger story and in fact negates itself instantly, it feels like a side-step in preparation for a much larger experience. Unfortunately with low sales to date, that experience may never come.

A Tale of Two Douches: Infamous 2 and Prototype 2 (PS3 & 360)

I never finished Prototype 2. In fact, I only got about 4 hours into it before I quietly but firmly said “Enough.” and even more firmly stood and strode not walked to the xbox, whilst commanding it to eject the disc like a pile of Bieber vomit.

I never finished Infamous The First either but I did finish Protoype the prototypical Prototype game AND I finished Infamous 2:More Infamous’r, so it all evens out.

Prototype 2 introduces Heller, a man give’n’er’ Hell so to speak. Apparently Alex Mercer, the sentient virus-that-walks-like-douche from the prototype Prototype caused the death of Heller’s wife and child. Heller sets out for revenge in an Uncharted inspired entirely linear sequence, only to find that he, not unlike every other soldier in the world, does not have enough bang-bang to annoy much less kill Mercer. So Mercer does what every creature annoyed by a gnat does: he gives Heller super powers. The same powers Mercer himself has, only more particley and prettified if you can call stringing the guts of a severed corpse between two buildings pretty.

Prototype the Second suffers from two major issues: Heller is an unrelenting stereotypical angry black man that fails to maintain the slight empathy generated by the setup and his gameplay centers entirely around doing horrible things to innocent people. As much as a cipher as Alex Mercer is there is no question he is not a GOOD DUDE. Heller is presented as a man seeking revenge for the death of his innocent family by killing lots of innocent families which is oxymoronic at best.

The greater crime is that P2:Judgement Day is a carbon copy of P1 with a shiny coat of paint. The UI is still brutally complex, though simplified from the first, and the jank is untouched but looks better. Players still have the ability to run straight up a building until something juts out from the building to cause them do a mid-air backflip and try to run up the building again. Lock-on is still mired with a hopeless camera that sways like a drunken cheerleader who strips on weekends on a party cruise during a tsunami. Everything troublesome and wrong about the first attempt is presented in its unvarnished glory, only with colors outside of red, pink and grey.

Infamous 2:The Messenger is a different shade of douche entirely. Cole the literal Messenger boy returns from the first game in time to see the city he and you worked so hard to save burn to the ground under the fiery fingers of The Beast. Weakened, he takes a slow boat, literally, to a post-Katrina New Orleans knock-off. Gifted with a new voice and some markedly better writing, Cole awakens into a whole new world, where super-powers are a new religion and bad people abuse that religion.

Unlike Prototype 2, Infamous 2 resolves many of the mechanical issues that plagued the first game as well as resolved many of the character issues that plagued the first game. Zeke, the annoying sidekick from the original is tolerably less annoying and there are even love interests that play into Cole’s gained (in)famy towards the end.

Cole still remains a gruff snarky douche, less a man chasing his destiny than a dog chasing its tail. Events happen around him as he follows endless radio directions guiding him through the ostensibly open world but hopelessly linear story. Both franchises draw from the strengths of each other, with Prototype 2 creating a populated and lived in New York under military quarantine, while Infamous 2 has a broader leveling system and some borrowed EFX from other Sony developers.

Heller’s master class in douche kept me from playing more than a couple hours of Prototype. Cole’s understated douche wasn’t enough to keep me from finishing Infamous 2.

Your taste for douche may vary.

I Deserve Better

Buried between the piles of revelations and self-reflections of late, I come to realize that my time deserves to be better spent. That there is only so much of it left, and to spend more than a moment experiencing something bad is not worth it.

the long and the short

Short Cuts: Games I tried but have nothing to say about

Lollipop chainsaw (360): I played until the end of the first level and retreated to let my teen son play. It feeds all of his needs in its endless repetition and grind-rewarding scoring. The jokes are funny the first time, and repeated endlessly, reducing great ideas to tiresome experiences. Compounded by intensely linear design, Suda51’s penchant for beating a horse to death with another horse is well represented.

Payne in the ass: Max Payne 3 (360)

Max leapt and spun like a leaping and spinning thing, puking bullets in every direction, but unable to hit anything he aimed at. He grumbled to himself, dry and overly serious, deeply committed to the newfound film noir tone the original game had parodied. Max drank and took some painkillers, because that’s what haunted men do. They also shoot people.

A lot of people.

Meaty with a crisp feel: Rage (PC)

Light defines the experience of Rage. Well earned and unflattering comparisons to Fallout 3 and Borderlands aside, light and how we perceive it drives every frame of Rage. The air appears so clear and crisp that one can taste it, like morning in the mountains.

Time to Defeat: Dark Souls (360)

After a 30 min travesty with Demon Souls, I expected Dark Souls to beat down my spirit and break me in a similar manner. It did, it just took longer.

After fighting my way to the same boss a dozen times and spending 4 hours playing the same sections over and over, I finally conceded. The repetitive grind of pattern recognition and trial & error is not for me, though it is fascinating to watch my step-son wind his way through the game. He grinds souls veraciously, leveling and releveling, immune to the fear of losing souls, but still afraid of every new area. Dark Souls is a triumph of game design for players immune to crushing defeat.

Built for adults:Mass Effect 3 (360) SPOILERS

As Sheppard flung herself into a shimmering column of light, and smiled as she fell, I glanced over at my wife. This has been a shared journey, where I would only play when she had time and willingness to watch. She had been captivated by the characters and the story. She was weeping softly. She told me later, surprised at herself, that she couldn't believe that a video game had affected her so. Mass Effect 3 is a masterpiece. It is a capstone on unique experience of unrelenting ambition. If the extent of your enjoyment is tied to the cutscene at the end you have missed the entirety of the 30-40 hours that brought you to that point. Play it again, and reflect on the history across three games that brought Sheppard to this point. Revel in relationships gained and lost and if you are lucky, shed a tear. Mass Effect 3 stands with Journey as diametric proof of games as art. Rejoice.

Smells like bacon tastes like chicken: Dead Island (PC)

Dead Island released as a broken game on all platforms, but perhaps none more broken than PC. Visually stunning and relentlessly ambitious, it has however been patched at least 5 times on PC and several times on console in order to be playable. Some PC voodoo was necessary to make the game run at a smooth 60 fps at 1920 x 1080 on my HDTV or my monitor at 1650 x 1050.

Hiding somewhere in the night: Journey (PS3)

Journey is a transcendental gaming experience, seamlessly mixing online co-op with gorgeous graphics and effortless controls. An entirely visual narrative that ebbs and swells effortlessly over its appropriate 2 hour running time, Journey is gaming as art encapsulated.  

It's not the age it's the mileage: Assassin's Creed Revelations 360

I can’t tell you what the plot is of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I know it is the completion of the sub-stories that have driven the original and its three sequels and that it staggers under the weight of its own mythology. I know that it confuses complication with complexity and has something to do with the assassins and templars and the memories of ancestors.

What I can tell you is that none of that matters. What I can tell you, is the story.

Still Playing: The Games of 2011

In a 2010 post here I discussed a bunch of games I had not yet finished all of which are now in the can.

From my Still Playing 2009 post I thankfully only have one game lingering, and that is the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R, despite now having Clear Sky as well.

Steam attacked my wallet a lot this year and this is what I am still playing from 2011, almost all of which are PC games with a few console titles as well:

The Man Without: F.E.A.R. 2 360/PC

Stop me if you have heard this one: mute protagonist known as “Point Man” blessed with psychic/physical abilities to perceive time as a higher rate and plagued by nightmarish visions of a deranged and violent little girl shoots his way to the revelation that the bad guy, Fettlel, is in fact his cannibalistic brother. Both characters are children of the the little girl Alma, who is projecting her younger self from cryo-storage in the basement of a facility. Alma is a powerful psychic driven insane by extended experimentation and apparently, raped to pregnancy.

Slap 'em if you got 'em- Duke Nukem Forever (PC)

I made this

After the legendary development hell, and the near legendary last-minute rescue by Gearbox, Duke Nukem Forever had no chance to meet any kind of expectation. Reviews were poor to scathing though the game sold more copies than expected, perhaps at the cost of longtime PR companies' reputation.

They mostly come out at night, mostly - Metro 2033 (PC)

 In a world where the only light is artificial, “day” and “night” become formalized concepts based around sleep. Children might grow and never once see the sky, living a lifetime in a concrete fortress surrounded by decaying vents, tunnels and hallways. Survival becomes the only task at hand as disease, vermin and external threats are ever present. Hope is the only thing more valuable than fire and ammunition.

This is the world of Metro 2033.

In the face: Aliens VS Predator (2010) PC/360

It was late in the last century when I stood over a friend’s shoulder and peered into a world of terror. Pre-fab corridors drifted off into the darkest of shadows, with red emergency lighting pricking at the black. He carried a pulse rifle, with an over/under grenade launcher and some flares. The environment throbbed with ambient noise but his motion tracker was a metronome of peace.

As he picked his way through the empty halls, tossing flares to light the way ahead, the tracker would blip, until, with a not-far-enough-away familiar shriek, movement would explode towards him. They came, black serpentine creatures with razor claws and faces of teeth. The pulse rifle spat at them, the grenades tossed them back but they kept coming, until he had no choice but to run.

The first time I watched Aliens VS Predator (1999) played on a PC I was so immediately riveted and overwhelmed with tension I actually asked him to pause the game.