2012 Reviews in Review

With 2013 beginning, it's hard not to reflect on the past year. 2012 was a very interesting year for me in regards to writing. It is probably obvious to see that my blog has been much quieter than it was at the start, and this is mostly due to the shift in reviewing habits. As the year went on, I reviewed more and more, and became more comfortable with it.

Although it is fun to review games, it did make me think about a few things. For one, with reviews very often on my plate, I felt that I was rarely able to enjoy games that I wanted to play "just because". Instead of flipping through my PS2 collection to find a new gem, I was usually forcing myself to play a game for review. Thankfully, most games I ever review are ones I'm interested in, but there is something to be said for free gaming time as opposed to gaming with a goal in mind. In this post I will share a couple charts which show off various stats for my year of reviewing and links to all my 68 reviews.

AMY is Sure Getting a Lot of Hate

AMY is a recently published survival horror game for XBLA and PSN. Although it comes out on PSN next week basically anyone in gaming press (or gamers) have checked it out on 360 and have a lot of negative things to say about it.

Mostly, reviewers don't seem split at all. They know what they feel about the game and demonstrate it in the best way they know how - a horrendous score. Now, I've spent around 6 hours with the game so far and it is pretty bad. But is it the worst game ever? Is it worthy of scores of 0 to 3 (yes someone did rate it zero)? Now 1 and 2 seem basically like scores for something that is completely unplayable. AMY is definitely playable - how else would reviewers supposedly beat the game otherwise?

What the game does wrong is how strangely retro it is. It takes from the old school of survival horror design, which was never very popular. No one will ever be found applauding the control scheme and design choices of AMY nor would they be happy about Resident Evil's tank controls. It's so odd that the game is this awkwardly controlled. Did the team play any games in the past few years?

Still, the game works and you can get accustomed to the controls. I have a feeling that most people who put out scathing reviews only sampled the first few chapters. The first few are the most rage-inducing. Even I was seeing red when traversing the same sections of level over and over again due to stupid deaths and mistakes. Taking a full day away from the game though and coming back to it I can see that it is not a steaming pile of poo. It's not good, but it could have been worse. Vampire Rain, Onechanbara, and Siren are three games that come to mind that are in the horror genre and are worse. Yet nobody seems to bring them up. AMY is the "worst game ever!!!!!1!";  except it isn't.

33 - Beyond Good and Evil HD (XBLA)

Genre: Action-adventure
Rating: T for Teen
Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: XBLA, PSN
Release date: 2011 (HD)

You know what's an awesome game? This one. Like, oh my goodness I haven't played something this fantastic in a while. The PS2 is one of my favorite modern consoles by a landslide because it was just brimming with excellent games. While I got to experience many as they came out such as various Silent Hills and Metal Gear Solids I totally ignored this one.

Yeah, I knew that it had a cult following. I heard all these people always giving it tons of praise but for whatever reason never went to actually try and play through it. However, I did buy it the year after it came out or so for pretty cheap on a Black Friday sale. Sometime around then I popped it into my console too but only played for maybe 10 minutes.

From those initial 10 minutes it really seemed like a hokey game. There didn't seem to be anything particularly special about it and so I figured everyone must have been crazy and put it back away. However, upon playing the XBLA release I was forced to get past the intro (to review it for a site) and fell in love almost immediately after the first few minutes. Despite games rarely grabbing a hold of my attention this one did it with insane force. I fell right in love.

Damn, there's really no way to express how much I love this game. The experience was wonderful and never too frustrating to play. There were some weird glitches at times but usually it was all good. If you've never played this one I really suggest giving it a try, especially now that's available for a fair price. If you want to check out my actual review thing then you can click here.

Would I play again? Yes!