Year in Review: 2012

This isn't a top ten list or even a top anything list, or even of games that came out this year. Rather, since there's steam sales going on, it's a round up of everything I can remember playing through this year, divided into categories that will probably piss off what few readers I will ever have. It also links to Steam, which may not be the best way to buy the game. Unfortunately I can't figure out what is ever on sale on Amazon, and GMG scares me. Oh and GamersGate cancelled the one thing I bought off them this season, but I don't blame them for deciding they shouldn't lose thousands of dollars on pricing errors.

So you know, do your research! Or don't, time is your own.

Play Relevant Month: Fatalism of the Orcs, Again?

Sequels, man, sequels. There's still orcs. And they still must die.

OMD2 catches up with its spiritual "competitors" Sanctum and Dungeon Defenders by adding two player coop, adding the oh so sexy sorceress from the first game as a coop partner. I put those two in quotes because OMD1 was fun, those other two, not really. I think coop is largely the biggest and most evident element added to the game, the engine looks slightly better, the music and sounds remain excellent. The art style is cartoonish and the whole game maintains the same irreverence the first one had. You'd notice immediately if you say down to play OMD2 that it wasn't OMD1, but maybe it would take a bit to discern between the two if you were watching a stream or so.

The other big changes to the game are more behind the scenes sort of stuff. There are new map types and new maps, but those sort of blur past you. The game has a much deeper pool of traps to choose from, with more weapons and the addition of a "trinket" item type that has various miscellaneous effects. The biggest change to those is a grindy system where you acquire "skulls" as you did in the first game to upgrade and modify your gear. The first game has one upgrade per trap, whereas this game has a chain of basic upgrades, then a binary selection.

Play Relevant Month: Raging off the Rocks

When Doom was put out all those ages ago, it didn't really have much of a story. Like a good horror film, it presented itself through powerful visuals. It had lighting, it was spooky, you strapped in and off you went against the demon hordes. Game storytelling has moved up a fair amount since I was a little kid all those years ago, but there is something to be said for the Mario, the Sonic, the Doom style of gameplay introduction. You pick it up and go.

Rage on the other hand wants to have a story, so it opens with a cutscene, then what amounts to tutorial. The first time through, I got bored through the tutorial before I could save. I assumed it did the checkpoint autosave thing! So I had to do the start again. I stands out when you think about Doom, where I'd have been knee deep in the dead (hehe) in the same span of time.

The open is so jarring and weird to me besides. Like I said, you have your classic pick up and go games, and then you have storied games. In this, you're a guy in a pod, you wake up suddenly. And then pod opens to like, outdoors? So you think you're in the middle of some wasteland, which I guess you are, except some guy jumps you and bullets start flying seconds later. The pod was right there! If they wanted my delicious meaty bits, why didn't they just open the pod?

And then you're talking to John Goodman. He wants you to help out. For lack of anything else to do, you do. Spoiler: That describes the entire story.