Darren Gargette’s 2012

So we came this far to the year 2012 and now we’re going to die in a fiery pit of death

Before that happens, let me tell you what I did to prepare myself for the onrush of piping hot fire-mayonnaise through my kitchen window. It’s probably quite fitting that my 2012 has consisted of games which has usually featured at least one of the following:

1) A zombie apocalypse

2) Perma-death

3) Incredible difficulty and/or a swift kick in the bollocks

When this rapture comes, I’ll be ready and waiting to fight to the death and when I do I shall just re-spawn anew and carry on. Wait, that’s not how real life works is it?

Before you all bite my head off like a ravenous cadaver, please let it be known that I haven’t put Telltale’s first season of The Walking Dead in this video for reasons which are best left unknown.  It wasn’t because the game was a let-down, nor did I leave it out because our friend Joshua Garrity covered it in his video. Rest assured however that there is a definite reason/excuse as to why I forg– didn’t include The Walking Dead.

Just imagine it that was Hotline Miami. Yeesh.

It felt like the independent video game space exploded this year, proving its worth even more with some fantastic quality gaming created by a small handful of coders or even in some cases a single person.  This constant push for more polygons, higher resolution textures and fancier effects is always nice to see, but there’s just something about indie games which keeps things real, leaving the constant hand-holding behind which we’ve witnessed too much in the ‘AAA’ space.

Having said that, there were certain AAA type games which were impressive yet lacked that extra something to have them appear in my 2012 retrospective video. Mass Effect 3, Halo 4, Borderlands 2 and New Super Mario Bros U are all top quality products, but failed to truly inspire me due to the lack of innovation. So whatever did happen to new IP?

Well, let me tell you; ZombiU hit the street just recently and has proven to be a huge success from my point of view.  I was a fan of survival horror until the recent dilution of the genre meant that my interest in it waned slowly but surely with each year. ZombiU, despite its terrible name, came out swinging with a cricket bat and knocked the competition for six.

Dishonored[sic] was also an impressive début from Arkane Studios via Bethesda Softworks, evoking a very distinct vibe from a number of previous fan-favourite games.  Half-Life 2, BioShock, Thief & Deus Ex all rolled into one? Sure, why not? A fantastic experience even if the story failed to achieve greatness.

Anyway, without further ado, this video below will let you know just how I did spend most of 2012; I went indie, baby: