So we've survived our supposed Mayan fates and have neared the end of the year 2012, and since most of us here are gamers, I figure we could do a bit of sharing of our personal game of the year nominations. 2012 had a lot of games, and a lot of feelings are held to certain ones. So I'll list 4 categories that should be able to fill the desired feelings of interest. They are;

Game of the Year, which is the game you had the most enjoyment and you feel is the best,

Surprise of the Year, where a game came out of nowhere and turned out to be fun,

Disappointment of the Year, which a game you were looking forward to failed to deliver,

and Worst Game of the Year, where the game was utter crap and the cons greatly outweight the pros.

I'll kick it off;

Game of the Year: Torchlight 2 - Whether I'm running around as an old tinkerer with a huge cannon, a spear-totting raging bitch of a woman, A dashing ronin armed with a crossbow and has a pet hawk, or whatever combination I want to make, its always full of loot, fights, explosions, loot, danger, exploration, loot, variety, and of course loot. Looked forward to it ever since the first one and I wasn't disappoint. It may not have brought anything new to the ARPG formula, but it definitely left its mark in the genre.

Surprise of the Year: XCOM-Enemy Unknown - Now I'm not one for unfairly hard games with permadeath, but for some reason I became strangely infatuated with this title. I've only played the demo, but I know this is the one game I'll get once some spare change comes my way. Something about the idea of training your own crew of badass soldiers, decking them out with various abilities, and sending them to battle with the chance that they won't make it out alive seems interesting to me. Probably because it reminded me of Final Fantasy Tactics and D&D, which is fitting since thanks to XCOM I've gained a resurgence for Tactical RPGs and started playing some, like Fallout Tactics, Avernum, and even a D&D campaign.

Disappointment of the Year: Soul Calibur 5 - While I did enjoy the game for what it was, and the character creator was always my favorite part, it felt greatly lacking in the offline department compared to past titles. Yes, they put more emphasis on the fight mechanics and online play, but it failed in really getting you to appreciate the new characters that replaced the old ones, and failed harder in letting you know who they are due to the removal of the traditional arcade story mode.

Worst Game of the Year: Since FF13, I've been making sure not to get shafted on my game time with bad games, so I haven't played anything this year that I would consider utter crap. But from personal observations and reactions from others, I would pick one of the Resident Evil games, either ORC or 6.