The Best of 2012

My favourite five games of 2012. Why five? Don't know. In order? Not really. More questions? Probably not.

1) Sleeping Dogs. If you've dabbled in the wonders of Hong Kong for any length of time (or China in general) you'll have had a whale of a time with Sleeping Dogs. The acting was top rate, and though they didn't push the policeman / triad schism far enough it still did enough to be one of my entries here. Shame the DLC looks to be the all too common "cheap pricepoint and little content" so beloved of most games around these days. Fighting tournaments and "spooky" Halloween events? Bleh. You have a rock solid storyline to flesh out, guys. Don't waste it.

After a wonderful experience on console, this game almost soured me completely due to the infamous hkshop.exe error on PC (go Google it, then weep). In fact, this sounds more like a rant about things I hate than "my top games" so I'll shut up now.

 

2) FTL. A powerhouse of decision making and random luck blessing the brave. Best thing to come out of Kickstarter? It might well be. Anybody with the mildest Star Trek hankering needs to have this on their PC. Also here's a few tips (I'll also add to those that Drones are essential).

 

3) Hotline Miami. If you ever wanted to pretend to be Professor Pyg while powerdrilling the heads of those who truly deserve it, then this is the game for you. I keep seeing "Drive: The Game", but "Professor Pyg: The Tribute Album" would be more appropriate. Not so much what your character does, as the overall feel of what takes place keeps reminding me of him for some reason.

 

4) Binary Domain. I'm truly glad to see it popping up on a number of "best of" lists. EVERYBODY should play this.

 

5) Spec Ops: The Line. This shunted a fair few titles out of this spot quite late on, as I only recently played it. The campaign is around six hours on normal difficulty and probably closer to ten on hard. It's powerful, it's bold, it's dramatic, it doesn't shy away from the horrors of war and almost everything it does is very, very smart. In fact, something it starts to do later on with a common videogame "thing" will slowly but surely start to freak you out a bit. And that's before you get to the plot, and the multiple interpretations it bears the weight of. A phenomenal title, and something that everybody should play.

It also doesn't contain a single QTE, and that's quite remarkable in this day and age.

 

The rest of the best of the bunch

I haven't done much with Torchlight 2, but it seems like a lot of fun. XCOM probably got doinked off the above list by Spec Ops, but is a really rather sensational game. Legend of Grimrock would have booted FTL or Hotline Miami out of the top spots, but again - not enough playtime. Borderlands 2 is phenomenal, but somehow it doesn't quite squeeze into the list. I guess I might just be a sucker for the first game.

And, me being me, I couldn't let this blog post finish without a closing complaint so I'll just come right out with it: my biggest gaming disappointment was Far Cry 3 which - I've come to realise - isn't as good as Far Cry 2. Blog post incoming, release the hounds and happy new year.

FTL Tipsheet

Here are my FTL protips (buyer beware, I've died horribly on the seventh wave every single time so maybe I'm not the right guy for the Protip job). Having said that:

1) Comb as much of the first map as possible, because you won't be able to hang about on later sections of the game. At this point, the enemy ships chasing you are fairly weak and you can afford to get caught by them once or twice as you forage near the exit.

2) For the first few levels, passing through a red area isn't quite as bad as it seems. It's worth passing through them if taking the "safer" route means you'll end up in a bunch of nebula sections which almost always mean instadeath later on in the game.

3) When upgrading the ship, a lot of players start powering down the medbay because other bits of the ship need to be up and running (you know, like oxygen and guns or whatever). Don't neglect the medbay! It'll stop you getting dead (important) and you can also use it to fend off ship invasions. How? PULL UP A CHAIR, but first: the doors.

4) Upgrade the doors as soon as possible. On later stages your ship will be on fire pretty much all the time, and if you wander into bug / mantis territory you'll be dealing with ship invasions every couple of hops. Patching up your doors will allow you to deploy some tactics. Position your least favourite redshirt in the vicinity of the invaders (next room over should do it) and shuffle one or two extra guys in the medbay.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

The redshirt will lure the invaders to the medbay where they'll be greeted by three or more shipmates who can lay out a smackdown while being constantly regenerated. There is a downside to this tactic, in the form of the next tip...

5) The moment the invaders look like they're going to die, start filtering your guys out of the medbay asap. The reason for this is the same reason you don't do what I did and get into the habit of healing everybody at once - I lost my entire crew bar one guy when an attacking ship teleported a big explodey thing into the medbay.

Unless you're in a gambling mood (or need to smack up some invaders) then only heal your crew two at a time, max.

6) Always target the enemy weapons, then go for the engines so they can't run away. After that, it's a case of juggling those two and hammering the bridge. I've never really seen any benefit to blasting away at their oxygen supplies.

7) Luck plays a part in this, but when you're on the run and desperately trying to get your hands on supplies, a defence drone will work wonders in fending off attackers long enough to be able to jump to safety. Hands up anybody who ever bothered to use a drone. I'll wait...

8) There is no 8. That's everything, it's all I have. I'll probably remember a few others and update the post but feel free to drop some more in if you have them.