2012 Holiday season is officially at a close for most of us now and so here are our The Bad, The Good, and the Oh Crap games of 2012.
The Bad:
2012 Biggest Disappointment: Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft was the biggest disappointment for us. Yes the team over at Blizzard did a fabulous job on improving questing and story-telling in WOW and the expansion was much better received than Cataclysm. However, after you get to level 90 on one character (at least when we stopped playing) you were faced with an incredibly long grind of reputation to gain access to the next tier of questing and rendered the playing of alts a daunting and crushing prospect. I admit it, I fell for Ghostcrawler’s promise that the game was quest friendly and not solely focused on end-game. I knew better but deep down, i wanted to believe.
2012 Most Overhyped: Easiest category of the them all, Guild Wars 2 was by far the most overhyped game of the year. If you are going to build a game around the ideas cobbled together from other games, then the game had better be able to stand the test of time. Less than six months post-release and the game is in a sorry state, If you didn’t jump on the bandwagon in the beginning then do not pick up Guild Wars 2 as beginning leveling areas are most often devoid of other players thereby making it impossible to complete “dynamic” events.
2012 Worst Game of the Year: The Secret World wins this category because there are so few things Funcom handled well with the game and it, by far, has the worst and ugliest character creation system for any AAA game out there. If you are going to have the balls to claim, play the way you want, then dammit Funcom why did you build and release a game where all the characters are forced by the game’s engine to be the physique? The game had, and continues to have, so much potential in the questing system but the lousy combat, character creation, poor optimization make this the worst game of the year.
The Good:
2012 Biggest Surprise: Biggest surprise of the year was Planetside 2. Admittedly, it isn’t a game we play but it was something we both tried in beta. If you like shooters than this is definitely the MMO for you. You might be wondering why a game we don’t actively play won the category, quite simply I didn’t think Sony would be able to pull of the the revamp of the game and still meet the publishing deadline. SOE proved me wrong and released a game that has been very well received by critics and players alike.
2012 Best Expansion: Riders of Rohan from Turbine for Lord of the Rings Online was easily the best expansion of the year and we don’t yet have characters that have reached Rohan. However the overall gaming improvements the expansion brought to the old world of LOTRO is enough to win this contender filled category. The fact that loot automatically loots itself into my bags is enough to blow the competition away. Other gaming companies need to talk to Turbine about how they do this and implement it immediately.
2012 Game of the Year: Star Wars: The Old Republic went through a lot of growth, changes, and revisions during the first full year of release. However much the perceived lack of developer communication drove players from the game in the early month of 2012, or the griping of players who unreasonably expected an “end” game as robust as WOW’s, the team over a Bioware consistently delivered an improved game this year that maintained it’s story telling hear while making improvements to the health of the gaming community and the state of the game. SWTOR is the game we consistently returned to throughout the year and the game stayed true to it’s story foundation despite pressures otherwise.
Oh Crap:
2012 Biggest Waste of Money: There would be quite a discussion for this title around here since we bought two AAA titles that we aren’t playing and an expansion we no longer play. Both AAA titles, TSW and GW2 are now buy-to-play games but TSW will have to beat GW2 simply because we gambled on two lifetime subscriptions and lost. The conversion from Funcom was poorly handled for lifetime subscribers and left a bad taste that ensures no more dollars spent on Funcom titles in the future.
2012 Made You Scratch Your Head and go HUH?: Two game expansions tie for this dubious honor, Riders of Rohan for LOTRO and Chains of Eternity for Everquest 2. Their price points were, and continue to remain, insane for a purely digitally released product. When you charge well in excess of $50 for a digital expansion, there better be plenty of goodies included along with amazing gameplay and content. Both games delivered on gameplay and content but goodies could have and should have been more for both titles. The studios both appeared a little cash starved at their price points for the expansions. Development costs can be recuperated through more sales at a lower price point than missed sales because of a ridiculous price point for a digital expansion.
2012 Best Tie Ins: SWTOR wins this easily. The books that flush out the lore are simply amazing. Earlier in the year I read, Fatal Alliance by Seam Williams and I was hooked. I’m currently finishing up the second book, Deceived by Paul S. Kemp and then will be devouring and savoring, Revan by Drew Karpyshyn. The newly released forth book, Annihilation by Drew Karpyshyn. Why more gaming companies haven’t figured out the tie-in concept baffles me.
2013
2012 saw a shifting in our overall gaming patterns, stepping outside our respective comfort zones and trying new and different games. i highly doubt it is a pattern that will be repeated this year. I know I have my three core MMO’s I play, Everquest 2, LOTRO, and SWTOR and I don’t think anything will change that this year (admittedly The Elder Scrolls Online stands the best chance). There will also be a return to more console gaming around here as we discovered in the last week or so, we missed too many titles in 2012.
