The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2012

Well, here we are again. Another year has come to a close, and I’ve not played every videogame that came out in the last twelve months. I know, how shocking. And here are some reasons: money, time, sanity. I do make a conscious attempt to balance my videogaming time with my time for creating all of those wonderfully “bad” comics no one really looks at, which can be quite a dance, especially during those months where it seemed like a desirable game came out every few days for weeks on end. Like this past October through November. It was dastardly. But yeah, videogames–I don’t play ’em all.

For those curious, here’s what I didn’t get to play last year and the year prior:

• The Top 10 Games I Didn’t Get to Play in 2011
• The Top 10 Games I Didn’t Get to Play in 2010

Get hooked by the sad puppy picture, stay for the maddening lists. All right, enough setup. Let’s get to this year’s misses pronto.

10. Red Dead Redemption // Batman: Arkham Asylum // Batman: Arkham City // Portal 2

Basically, for the number 10 spot, here’s just a bunch of games from previous years’ lists which I’ve still not gotten to experience. You could call this cheating, and I would agree with you, but I think they all still deserve some sort of mention. So let’s lump them together. I’m sure most of you are silently screaming at me from across the screen to play Portal 2 right now, a game which I bought for $5.00 from Steam’s latest Summer Sale, but have not even gotten around to installing yet on my laptop. Swing and a miss, I guess. My landlord continues to recommend Red Dead, too. One day. One day, people…

9. Dust: An Elysian Tail

A side-scrolling, action platformer with a really vibrant look and a tale of genocide. Seems like many dismissed this game simply because they fear the Furries, but it sounds like there’s a great, emotionally-driven story and even greater gameplay mechanics to enjoy here. Also, take into account that Dust: An Elysian Tail is the product of one man’s work. Yeah, I gotta get to this at some point. Selfishly, I’m waiting for a reduced price sale, and I think I just missed my chance to get it for half off the other day. Wah.

8. Crashmo

From what it sounds like, Crashmo is both a continuation from Pushmo and also an entirely different game. In this one, gravity takes priority, with blocks able to fall when moved off other rows and columns. And you can rotate the playing field á la Fez to get a better perspective on how to climb to the top and save that little kid yet again. That said, I’d like to get a wee bit further in Pushmo‘s later (and more straining) puzzles before moving on to new mechanics that literally change how one plays.

7. Dragon’s Dogma

An open world action-RPG developed by Capcom? Huh, okay. That’s an interesting start, but throw in the addition of creating a mini army of Pawns that you can customize and make your own. Bosses are climbable like in Shadow of the Colossus, Pawns can select between nine vocations and you can trade them among friends and strangers, and the realm is yours to explore. Seems like the story is paper-thin until the absolute very end, but maybe the story doesn’t matter all that much over taking down griffins and giant heart-eating dragons.

6. Faster Than Light

I did not back FTL on Kickstarter when its campaign was running and didn’t even really know it existed until it was released and quickly loved by many, many gamers. It’s been described succinctly as “Oregon Trail in space.” You run a spaceship and try to get as far as you can with it, surviving asteroids and pirate raids and general malfunctions. When you die, it’s done, and you have to start over. That sounds cruel and punishing, but this is the kind of game that you go back into smarter and more prepared, whether that helps you or not. Randomness is a factor for sure, but that’s the risk you take when piloting a spaceship.

5. LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

I was not a huge fan of LEGO Batman; I mean, it was fine, and much better than LEGO Indiana Jones 2 for sure, but it’s not my favorite of the LEGO videogames. Maybe that’s because it didn’t have a film to follow, and it set out to tell its own story, without words. Which is pretty hard to do unless you already know what’s going on. Now, LEGO Batman 2 doesn’t have a film to follow again, but this is where the LEGO characters began to talk, which has to help in telling a story, I suspect, and you have a huge hub world of Gotham to explore. Plus all the familiar hooks. And there’s more than Batman characters here. Maybe once I’m done running around LEGO Middle-earth I’ll give this a spin, but that could be a while. Spoiler: I’m loving LEGO Middle-earth.

4. Dishonored

I got my stealth fix with Mark of the Ninja this year, but it sounds like Dishonored does some good things too, especially with the Blink ability, which allows you to quickly travel from point A to point B super fast. It’s got a New Weird/steampunk-like setting, and you can handle missions in a number of ways, just like the Deus Ex of yesteryear. I like variety and doing things my way. At some point, I’ll get to this.

3. Mass Effect 3

This year, I played Mass Effect 2. It went all right. I found it to be an okay space-based adventure across the galaxy, but nothing astounding. In fact, I think I enjoyed Mass Effect more, as there was more to explore there, to learn about the races and planets and technology. I got through the “suicide mission” just fine, but then Mass Effect 3 came out and it sounded like a whiff for various reasons. Not interested in online multiplayer, and it seems like you can only experience the game in its true form via numerous DLC packs, released later. Think I’ll wait for a “game of the year” version, which, if Mass Effect 2 is any proof, BioWare won’t ever put out.

2. Journey

No PlayStation 3, no play. Insert a thousand scarf-wearing sad faces. Journey, from what I’ve heard, sounds absolutely amazing. And every screenshot looks like a perfect desktop wallpaper. Take that as you will.

1. Assassin’s Creed III

Assassin’s Creed III came out right at a bad time for me, with little time to play and having already purchased a few Nintendo 3DS titles to hold me over. So I had the choice of getting this or a new winter coat, and I went with the latter. So far, it’s worked out pretty well, and even though most reviews for ACIII were less than positive, I’m still curious to see what it is like to be an assassin in colonial times, as well as all the wilderness exploration. Heard it doesn’t “end” things, which is a bummer, as I think this series needs closure and then to come back as something completely new.

—

Originally, Telltale’s The Walking Dead was at the #1 spot, but thanks to the Microsoft’s Christmas spirit, the first episode “A New Day” is being given out for free on the Xbox 360 all week long, and so I downloaded, plopped myself on the couch next to Tara, and quickly devoured the entire thing in one sitting. It’s really good. I picked up the four other episodes for 200 MP a piece this morning and plan to see how things go for Lee and Clementine as soon as possible.

That said, naturally, there are even more games I haven’t gotten to play this year, some of which sound fantastic (Hotline Miami, The Unfinished Swan, Retro City Rampage), and some of which I just couldn’t find the energy to care about (Halo 4, XCOM: The Enemy Unknown). Maybe I’ll get to trying out a few of these in the upcoming 2013 stretch, but with a huge and growing backlog in Steam (thanks, all you indie bundles) and a New Year’s Resolution of completing some classics from my collection for the first time, I might not. We’ll see what ends up on next year’s list; one promise I can make is that I’ll be playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf the very first minute of the day it is released. I need that game like woah.

Anyways, what games did you miss out on this year? Speak up in the comments section below! And good luck in the year to come.

This little Sticker Star is gonna go far

My Nintendo 3DS is getting a lot of love as of late, and I blame all these big name games coming out at once. Mostly Pokemon White 2, Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Crashmo, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Y’know…to name a few. Today’s post will be about that last one mentioned, but I am sure to be talking about that bizarre and totally unneeded horseback chase scene from the newest Layton adventure, as well as the overall creepy 3D models. Because somebody needs to tell that world that Luke looks like he’s tripping balls, and I guess it’ll be me.

Anyways, Sticker Star. It’s a game I’ve been really excited for since it was first revealed to be coming to the 3DS. I think back then, when we knew very little about it, many thought it was just a remake of one of the older titles from the franchise, but it turned out to be its own being. Maybe a remake is still on its way though. Who really knows. Nintendo doesn’t like to give us too much information, and one can only look to the missing North American release date for Animal Crossing: New Leaf to confirm this. Regardless, it’s here, and while I waited for it to get here, I picked up and played an hour or two of Super Paper Mario for the Nintendo Wii a month or so back, which has a great look, an interesting, Fez-like mechanic that distorts the way you see a screen, but is horribly paced and far too hand-holdy. I meant to play more before Sticker Star dropped, but alas, that never happened.

Despite how bad I am in real life at peeling stickers off books or DVD cases, I’m really enjoying Sticker Star so far. A seemingly unanimous complaint about the game is that it is a much more simplified RPG, and that since battles don’t grant you much other than coins, you’re better off avoiding than fighting and “wasting” your depletable sticker collection. I haven’t felt that way yet, though there has been a few occasions where I have just jumped over an enemy instead of on it to initiate a fight. Fights consist of using a sticker for every action, and so they disappear fast, but also reappear twice as fast, as they are everywhere. You really can’t walk more than a few steps before finding one behind a bush, stuck to a wall, or within a question block. If you’re really good at timing pressing a button when you attack or block–think Costume Quest‘s battle attacks but without the prompt–you’ll save on stickers and wheel in more coins. I’m liking it all, even the inventory management aspect, which is constantly changing as a new sticker comes in or a larger sticker gets used to free up space.

The story is a story. There’s a Sticker Festival held in the Mushroom Kingdom, but then Bowser shows up and ruins it all by breaking apart the Sticker Comet, which is now scattered across various parts of the map. A magical floating crown called Kersti deems that only Mario can…blah, blah, blah. You know it from there. It exists to serve the gameplay, and that’s all–at least from what I’ve seen. However, the writing of each individual character you come across is fun and light-hearted, with a lot of wink wink and puns, so there’s potential for great story beats, but time will tell on that. Regardless, it gets you out into the world map, collecting stickers, defeating Bowser’s endless army of goons.

Whereas I found Super Paper Mario too hand-holdy from the start, the exact opposite can be said about Sticker Star, and that seems to be where a lot of gamers got frustrated. The lack of button prompts on attacks and defense stances is fine, as it teaches you how to use those stickers correctly, but a lot of sticker/puzzle solutions are hidden in the world, and to find them, you really need to experiment. The game will not tell you what to do, and if you get a hint, it is paper-thin (hey-o!). For example, there’s a part in World 1 where you need to stop water from flowing into a fountain to collect a special item. When you approach the faucet’s knob, there is no button prompt, and previous puzzles like this required the use of a specific item, such as a fan or pair of scissors. I tried paperizing the world to no effect. Then, out of ideas, I jumped on the faucet, totally just trying to hop down to the bottom part of the level, and by jumping on it, the knob turned, slowly shutting off the water. That’s not the best example, as maybe it highlights my slowness more, but it does show that not everything is spelled out for the player, harking back to an age when trial and error was how things got unstuck (hey-o x2!).

Okay, back to it tonight. I’m currently at the fortress in World 1 and trying to figure out how to stop those fans from blowing so much wind and knocking Mario off ledges. I’ll give it everything I got, and if I end up spending more than an hour trying to solve that level–well, I’ll give in and look up an answer online. If one exists, that is. The fun for me in Sticker Star really is in exploring as the colorful, diorama-esque visuals get my eyes dilating every time, but to do that one must constantly be moving forward.