2012 - The Highlights (EHeroFlareNeos)

With 2012 coming to a close, this is the time to look back at what came out this year and reflect on how we felt. While not all of it was great, there are still some things that deserve mention. Below, in no particular order, is my personal list of the top games, movies and disappointments of the year, plus a special new category (that hopefully I will never feel the need to use again).

Top Movies of 2012

The Avengers
As the culmination of Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers combines humor with action and well-written characters to create the ultimate comic book movie. While Joss Whedon isn't reason enough to fall in love with this movie, his hand in it cannot be denied, for he shares both writing and directing credits. The Avengers is one of those movies that I would be willing to watch over and over again, having seen it three times already, and this small space cannot do it enough justice. This is simply a movie to see without question.

Wreck-It Ralph
Video game movies have always been the butt of jokes across industries, with complaints that aren't that unfounded. However, Wreck-It Ralph has managed to prove that not only can they not suck, they can be worth repeat viewings. Though it can be compared with Toy Story in some aspects, the different spin it has on its genre is rather unique and sends its message across in a way that doesn't talk down to anyone or appeal to a single niche audience. Although there is some fan service of sorts for avid video game players, there is enough to satisfy even complete outsiders.

The Expendables 2
Let me be honest here, The Expendables 2 isn't the greatest movie ever made, nor is it something I'm going to immediately watch again on DVD. However, I placed it on this list for its ability to not only advertise exactly what it was going to do, but also sticking with it and staying true to itself. It establishes early on that there will be badass moments of awesome and it delivers badass moments of awesome. It's a true action movie through and through and I have no regrets watching it.

Top Video Games of 2012

Asura's Wrath
In a realm of gaming where God of War and Devil May Cry clones (and Bayonetta) run rampant, it's nice to see a game that manages to stand apart and take everyone else by storm. Asura's Wrath operates like an interactive anime, but it weaves an epic tale of a Deity named Asura, betrayed by his own kind and ripped away from his daughter. His resulting feats reach a status that exceeds its ilk and reaches beyond the heavens to deliver a very memorable experience.

Journey
Sometimes what doesn't really matter is the destination, but rather the journey. This is the tenet that Journey is built upon, drawing out the player's sense of isolation in a way that firmly establishes that video games can indeed be works of art. It may only last a couple of hours, but what truly matters is the experience it creates and that you may find yourself wanting to go on that journey again and again.

Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
It may be better for fans of Penny Arcade like myself, but OTRSPOD 3 is a game that I liked well enough to put on this list. The painful wait and change of developers proved to be well worth it, thanks to the unique approach to gameplay and tidal wave of humorous lines and references to Penny Arcade's entire webcomic run up to that point. Plus, the plot surrounding the Four Below takes a darker turn and knows when to generate genuine suspense. Also, it's only $5 (this cannot be stressed enough).

Assassin's Creed III
As I played the Ezio Trilogy, I was really waiting for a fresh new assassin to join the ranks and give me something new to do. Thankfully, Assassin's Creed III does just that, shifting the focus to the assassin Connor and changing the setting to the American Revolution. Though Brotherhood and Revelations are still required reading, so to speak, this entry is when things really kick into high gear and the framing device actually becomes interesting. As the conclusion to a long build-up, Assassin's Creed III is not a game to miss. Plus, it has some significance to me thanks to some of my ancestors being involved in the American Revolution.

Top Disappointments of 2012

Brave
After Cars 2, I feel that Pixar has really started to let themselves go. Brave is an improvement, but that doesn't change that this seems like the point where Pixar has lost some of their luster; having already achieved their earlier visions, they have now become more of a regular movie studio. The characters in Brave aren't as engaging, the plot has some holes and unusual anachronisms and there just seemed to be an overall lack of effort to make me want to rewatch this mother-daughter bonding tale. But hey, kids and die hard fans seem to like it.

The Amazing Spider-Man
In the wake of the successful Marvel Studios movies, Sony created a reboot of their successful Spider-Man trilogy in order to maintain their grasp on the franchise. Unfortunately the result isn't as great as the Sam Raimi films, with a darker tinge to try and compete with Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, a plot that leaves several threads dangling (pun intended) and the revelation that being bitten by a radioactive spider actually gives you just Spider Sense and the ability to perform spider-based parkour. I wasn't impressed, but I won't challenge anyone for genuinely enjoying it (just don't say "because it was dark like Batman"). Hopefully the inevitable sequel will be better.

I Am Alive
This is an example of a game stuck in development hell and managing to come out, but as a different entity. I Am Alive originally had a very brilliant premise and gameplay ideas, but somewhere along the way it turned into a survival horror with only a few fleeting remnants of the original vision intact, thanks in part to the new setting being deemed "more realistic." I don't entirely regret finally playing I Am Alive after its seeming disappearance from the fabric of space, but in hindsight I'm still waiting to play the game that I got excited for.

Assassin's Creed III
I admit that it's weird to see Assassin's Creed III take up a slot on two contradictory lists, but just hear me out for a minute. The story was handled very well and there are plenty of improvements to the gameplay systems that make Connor one of the best assassins in gaming. However, the game also failed to recapture the addiction I felt when playing Assassin's Creed II for the first time and the mission structure just isn't up to par. While some bugs and annoyances have been fixed in a patch, what I played wasn't enough to keep me occupied for days on end. I'll play the sequel, but I hope Ubisoft actually puts more time into that installment than this.

Worst Video Game of 2012

NeverDead
Ever since the day I decided to play NeverDead, I have spent every day since regretting that awful two days of my life. Bryce Boltzmann is not a hero I can get behind, the gameplay is absolutely abysmal, the story falls flat on its face and the enemies are relentless so as to make the game a possible way to turn into The Hulk. Not even Megadeth's amazing contribution could bring this game up from being nothing more than a plastic container full of urine.

Honorable Mentions of 2012 (Not reviewed, but worth bringing up)

SoulCalibur V
It may be the game I exchanged NeverDead for, but I had a really great time with this game. This installment in the series manages to fix what was wrong with SoulCalibur IV and improve upon such things as story, art style and combat. It's a well-balanced fighting game that I think fighting game fans would appreciate, even if they are fresh to the series. Plus, you get to be Ezio Auditore, so what's not to like?

NeverDead - Much Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts

The background color of the box art here clearly indicates the quality of the product.

When I first saw a trailer for NeverDead, it looked like it might be a fun and unique title. With a unique premise and a song written by Megadeth specifically for it, I couldn't help but be curious. Once I got my hands on it however, I ended up playing a game that not only failed to live up to my expectations, but also a product that feels like not enough effort went into it to balance the mess that it truly is.

First, the story. 500 years ago, Bryce Boltzmann faced the demon king Astaroth. After failing in his task, he is cursed with immortality and a demonic eye. In the current age, he ends up working as a demon hunter for a living, doing so for money and sport. When demons invade a city, he teams up with private investigator Arcadia of the organization NADA to remove the threat. Along the way, many clues hint at the possible revival of Astaroth, with the fate of the world in the balance. As it turns out, the resulting plot is very cliche and manages to cover a lot of the basic tropes of this genre to the point where I was able to guess the plot twists based solely on who was important enough to get a name. When the twists actually do come up, it doesn't really come as much of a surprise and I felt completely underwhelmed.

The characters are also as flawed as the story, but not in any enjoyable sense. Since Bryce is immortal, I never once felt worried about him no matter how many bits of his past are revealed. While he is supposed to be a wise-cracking demon, he comes off as more of a failed mixture of Duke Nukem, Marcus Fenix and Dante; Compared to them, his pool of one-liners is very small, extremely repetitive and groan inducing, his attempts at being serious make him look more like an a-hole, and weapons end up not being creative enough or exciting (more on that later). To balance out his immortality, they have him protecting his mortal assistant Arcadia, though she feels a lot like the love interest in a story that eventually starts to care for his life despite how she first feels about him. Otherwise, the villains come off more as cardboard and feel thinly developed. What doesn't help is the generic script and only somewhat passable voice acting.

Throughout the game, Bryce will come across a range of guns and swords to use in combat. Unfortunately, these weapons fail for their own reasons. To begin, the guns are all of the generic ones that gaming veterans will no doubt be familiar with by now. We've got the bare basics, from the pistol and submachine gun to the grenade launcher and shotgun. While they do operate fine on their own, the game insists on having you dual-wielding the whole time. This may not sound like a big problem, since games like The Darkness and BioShock made it fun, but this game seems to like making the reticles separate while in motion, meaning that I had to stand perfectly still and wait a couple of seconds to get the kind of shot I actually wanted. The process proved frustrating, especially considering one bigger flaw: you can't lock onto enemies with the guns.

Sure, you can zoom in and aim that way, but Bryce moves a lot slower than preferred in that time considering what goes on in each area. You could say that the destructible environments would justify the lack of an ability to lock on  to aim, but if the sword can do this with ease, why not allow the guns to do this as well? On that note, I found the swordplay to be much more reliable in combat despite needing to lock on and slash with the right stick, mainly because most of the time I could actually tell that what I was doing had any real effect on the enemies in front of me. While you can't switch between swords like you can the guns, although that process is slow and painful, collecting new swords at least makes it stronger and I was able to feel some satisfaction from that.

While the environments are all beautifully detailed, they are also incredibly small and cramped, which sounds like a winning combination when the game throws a vast multitude of enemies at you. The demons, while impressively detailed, all have absolutely unimaginative names that hardly match their appearance. When you've got demon types named Puppy, Spoon, Panda Bear and Hippo, maybe it's time to get more creative. While clearing rooms of enemies to advance isn't something new or anything to get worked up over, I once again mention Devil May Cry, this game manages to make it annoying. Most of the time enemies spawn from wombs that you have to kill, meaning that there can be a potentially infinite number of enemies unless you stop it from generating one to three enemies every so often, which is a pain to do when multiple wombs are in an area to help make the levels feel more claustrophobic than necessary. What doesn't help at all is how often they love to evoke the game's main mechanic: the inability to die.

Yes, instead of dying, Bryce's limbs can be decapitated from damage or holding certain buttons. This game mechanic is the big pitch for the game and sounds like it could be used to help solve puzzles or make the game more challenging since you have to retrieve your limbs by combat rolling past them. Unfortunately it adds another layer of frustration since your decapitated limbs fly off way too far, sometimes to the other side of the room. A secondary mechanic that should have relieved this is the ability to regenerate limbs on the spot once you've lost them, though it's pretty flawed too. This mechanic is determined by a gauge, the speed of filling determined by how many limbs are attached. It refills too slowly in the most dire situations however, and even when you do regenerate completely you'd  better be prepared to suffer through this all over again. These mechanics when combined with the inability to die and sheer size of enemy waves more often than not turn the game into less of a fun experience and more into something of an exercise in frustration.

Now, when you kill enemies you gain experience points, or XP. XP, rather than leveling up, is used as the game's currency for buying skills that Bryce can use. Buying skills isn't a bad thing really, like in Devil May Cry when Dante's new powers become dormant until you use them. Here however, skills require slots, some of which take up more than others. Not only was this part of the system annoying, but also what some of the skills do; some come in handier than others, though one of them is not letting the gun reticles separate! When I found the right combination of skills I was able to squeeze some sense of enjoyment out of the game, but not enough to overcome other frustrations.

As I had mentioned earlier, Arcadia is Bryce's mortal companion who can die and serves as one of the only two ways to ever fail a mission (the other being when your lone head is sucked up by a Grandbaby enemy and you fail at timing something from a sports simulation game properly). When she is about to die, Bryce has the ability to heal her by holding down a button near her body, and this is much easier said than done. A lot of the time when this kicked in I was completely decapitated and waiting for my body to regenerate, only to have my head cut off repeatedly and almost fail to make it to her in time. While struggling with getting to her, she'll also repeatedly say lines about how dying is annoying, which was simultaneously confusing as well as an accurate barometer of how I felt at the time while playing.

The game's music, aside from the one song I wanted to hear, is also very forgettable even if there are a couple of good guitar riffs here and there. The variety it tries to introduce is also off-putting at times and just sounds plain goofy. I also noticed that the sound mixing was off, since at several points I couldn't hear what the characters were saying and thus failed to notice some instructions on what to do next even with subtitles on. While I know the player can remix the sound levels of the game, I don't believe they should have to in order to get the best experience.

I realize that I have gone this far without discussing the boss battles of the game. Most of them are piss easy, including the first major boss related to the story, executing strategies that are pathetically easy to get around thanks to them telegraphing their moves. The penultimate boss however, much like the final section of the game, is easily one of the most annoying thanks in part to his moveset and how hard it is to get a bead on him, causing me to fall back on using two guns I had planned on saving for other purposes. This battle however has nothing on my experience with the final boss. The very last boss in the game was so frustratingly hard and broken, while also involving and exploiting every flaw of the game, that I ended up going temporarily insane with rage and then subsequently breaking down into tears over it. As a result, I ended up immediately exchanging this game for SoulCalibur V, which incidentally enough came out on the same day.

It is very hard for me to recommend NeverDead to anyone except those who really want something unique if incredibly flawed. If it were up to me though, I would tell you not to touch this game with a 50-foot pole. The worst thing about this game for me personally however is that Megadeth, my favorite band, now has their name permanently attached to such a sub-par production. I almost feel as if this game wouldn't have gotten as much attention or sold as much if not for this fact, although I need to point out that the big song they wrote for it is barely present at all.

If you're like me and Megadeth is a big motivation for playing, then just avoid spending $60 on this game and instead buy the album, Thirteen (stylized TH1RT3EN), that has the theme song on it and loop it forever. The song alone is shorter but light years more enjoyable than the game it was written for.