In the sales: Games for 2012

So the release calendar is looking a bit scarce during the "butthole" months of January and February. What low calorie games will we be tucking into like an awkward metaphor to compensate? Raid the sales! Games games games.
The most depressing months, SAD, bad weather blah blah blah. Can it grandpa, the first two months of the year can be the best of your life, if you'll only let them. "It's raining", "it's too cold out", "my butt hurts", "I need to save money" - during the first portion of the year these atrocious excuses for excuses will all be miraculously accepted by both friends and family.

That's golden time, bronies. You and me time, webcam in our underpants time. Hot chocolate and croissants for breakfast, even. Gather together the cheap treats that you missed, and let us feast. Here's the games I'll be stuffing down my gusset for the next 58 or whatever days. Perhaps you could join me and we could play them together? Like, sort of, friends? I've never had one of those.
Zelda Skyward Sword



I started Zelda in December more out of habit than desire, an automatic function of my own golden memories - of Christmas mornings playing in my pyjamas with wide eyes.

I had to force myself through the first hour or so of Skyward Sword. Teeth gritted, fierce grip on my golden controller as characters explained in crawling text basic principles that had been familiar for years.

Hey hold your shield up to deflect blows! Roll into a tree and something might fall out! You found a heart! This will restore your energy by one heart. You are very lucky. You found a blue rupee! This is worth five rupees! Don't spend it all at once! That is a flower! Look at it.

The wonderful artwork and gentle music dampened the growing frustration, but there is only so much re-introduction of well known concepts I can take before I cry out in despair.

But soon you soar into the skies on the back of your weird little bird - freedom to swoop about with the wind rushing and the orchestra swelling your heart. And little by little the instructions disappears into the background, leaving you alone to enjoy.

There is so much to enjoy. Coming right off the back of Skyrim with its quicksaves and reloads, janky scripting and copy paste level design, Skyward Sword shines ever brighter. The game flows beautifully, full of variation and delight. The dungeons are the stars - challenge rooms that effortlessly straddle the line between tease and simplicity.


I'm conflicted over the motion controls though - on the one hand they add an extra dimension to almost everything, providing more moves at your fingertips and adding another element to puzzles. They also make the combat slightly more challenging, although it's more a case of precision and decision than speed. A slower pace suits the ambience.

On the other hand they make extended play sessions agony as I have to sit forward and concentrate and move a bit. Perhaps the game is better enjoyed in small chunks rather than mammoth gulps. The occasional imprecision of the Wii can be a real ball breaker too. The gift and the curse, I suppose.

I'm not too far into it - think Forest Temple in Ocarina. But I love it, and I think about it and I'm desperate to see more. If the dungeons reach the heights of some of the temples in Twilight Princess then I'm in for a treat. Also the harp music is magical. I can't imagine a more perfect cure for the cynical, hate filled creatures that we're all becoming. It's charming.

Bastion



Ah the danger of having unspent MS points and a low, low sale price. I caught Bastion at 600 points or so on XBLA, only to see it offered for 3.50 moneys or so on Steam a week later in the sales. Please understand I have no idea if those two amounts are close to each other, or which one is cheaper. I don't want to know. Please do not tell me.

Anyhow the draw of the lovely artwork and the promise of a beautiful story pulls at my soul, every day. But I have to maintain some discipline or things get out of hand. As you well know from our Autumn release calendar you can't dally with two fillies at once, as you will end up unable to satisfy either one, shuffling, half-spent and half-cocked between mistresses with droopy eyes and a chaff between your legs.

But it's next, surely. I want to get lost in a colourful world of shooting things and platforms materialising before you and making colourful potions, as is my understanding.

Batman Arkham City



Okay so I admit it, one week was not enough for Arkham City. I got about3 hours deep but pulled out before the snare snapped shut and I was stuck. So I'm saving the rest for a little while. I feel trying to play Batman immediately after finishing Dark Souls was a mistake. Going from a game with no overt direction and such a crumbling, empty landscape to a world of flashing neon messages and a thousand mission markers blinking for your attention was ... confusing.

The complexity seems initially a little overwhelming. The button combos for the fighting are a struggle early on, and I have to say I'm not in love with Gotham City as much as I was with the Asylum. Expanding the area into city blocks means a lot of filler - or at least a lot of repetitive structures. That dilutes the impact of the design, meaning less memorable environments. The contained areas of the Asylum were more controlled, tighter and more engaging than an endless urban sprawl.

Things will change though, I expect more unique environments like the early court-house scene. The Catwoman episodes offer a counterpoint that morphs the urban playground, giving it a new dimension, but again adds to the complexity. It's difficult to go more than 2 minutes fluttering around the cityscape without encountering some new mission, villain or distress call. Having buildings riddled with bright green riddler trophies that are only partly accessible adds to the tempting frustration.

It reminds me a lot of Assassins Creed Brotherhood, which provided a similarly over-complex cityscape, filled with icons and smears on your map. Hopefully once I learn to speak the games language, recognise its verbs and adjectives, everything will become clearer. A move from unintelligible scribbles all over my screen to a beautiful, brutal poem written in grunts and ominous threats. Also I get to punch men in the face over and over again. I hear rumours of a crane operating portion.

Demon's Souls



A return to where it all began. Again, I've slid two probing fingers into Demon's Souls' dank recesses, having sat dauntingly on my shelf for two months. I was instantly engaged, cautiously stumbling through a world brimming with menace and terror. Like falling in love with a horrible spider.

After only two levels and a tutorial I was already considering viable builds, investigating weapons and armour combinations and planning suicide runs for gear. Then Dark Souls came along and swallowed me whole. I'll approach a second attempt at Demon's armed with my reflexes already attuned to the strums of the Souls' dark strings.

Solid min maxing and nameless, faceless horrors, triumphs and desperate, plundering dashes through unfamiliar nightmares await. I'm looking forward to this the most. I drew that picture up there by the way. With a mouse, aye.

Darksiders



Fervently recommended to me as a Game of the Year contender by a friend, Darksiders has been on my radar for a while. I finally bit on a 7 moneys price, having walked the tightrope of availability and low price for too long. I've been burned before by a string of "Sold Out" messages on a title I'd waited too many months for. Better to have it and never play it than want it and never have it, I say.

But surely there's a danger in unmasking a brooding, Zelda-esque adventure within months of playing both the real thing and what I consider to be the "grown-up" successor - the Souls games. Will it just feel like a half-hearted stepping stone between two beloved shores? Can it match the delightful, joyful magic of Skyward Sword? Can it best the precision and majesty of Dark Souls? Can I get any more pretentious before the end of this paragraph?

All good questions, my friend. Perhaps it'll take it's place amongst those unappreciated gems, the Alpha Protocols and Hybrid Heavens, that sit vaguely in the memory. Perhaps it will not.

Resonance of Fate



Another contender, thrust into the octagon by our buddy Al. His loveable gushings over this punky JRPG had me moist at the worst possible time. It sat, un-ordered in my Amazon wishlist for months, as I was endlessly updated on minor price fluctiations. Dropping finally below the acceptable 14 moneys mark, and appearing to be dangerously unavailable at many other retailers, I caved.

I am nothing if not an unashamed fanboy of quirky JRPG battle systems. How many of you played Baten Kaitos? Hmm? You sicken me. Out of my sight. If the battle music is good then I'm in. That's all I want. Something to stir me and make my fingertips sweat as I choose options and press buttons. Something to make me rush home and forgo a proper dinner, relying instead on crisps, beautiful crisps, to sustain me. Or cheese, on a cracker, served in a man's hat.

Dead Space 2



So I have a confession: I've not finished Dead Space 1 yet. I'm on the second to last chapter. I do like it, but I have a dread of playing it. I put it on the hardest difficulty and, although I don't die often, I feel a sense of apprehension when I switch on. I have to overcome this palpable tension to actually play. I have to steel myself to endure it.

But when I play, the game doesn't even scare me. It's a nonsense. My biggest fear is that I've taken the wrong upgrade path, or that I've used up too much ammo and won't have enough for the boss. It's like making an administrative phone call, to the bank or the pizza place or whatever. I hate the thought of it, but as soon as someone answers it's fine.

I'll put off that sort of thing for months, just because. Then in the end, it's not so bad, is it? It's just a game, it can't hurt, I'm good at it even. Boom, take that idiot crawly things with legs. Zap, bye bye weird gloopy jumpy thing and your arms.

So I'll finish off Dead Space and then jump into Dead Space 2, because I hear it's like the first but with less "oh no, now this is broken! shucks!". I mean I like Dead Space but gosh, it's a bit light on the mission variety isn't it? More cinematics, more madness, a terrifying spring awaits.

Final Fantasy XIII



Something about the timing of FF13 was all off, for me. It came out just at the wrong period, allowing me to only devote a week or so before something more beguiling came along. I've played it for two extended sessions since then, and so now I'm 25 or so hours in.

The first, say, 10 hours of the game are a pretty mean slog. I'm not surprised about the negative press at all. Everything is drip fed, and the story really isn't snappy or engaging enough to make up for the drudging, linear level design. It's as if there's a beast surging to get out, but Square-Enix just won't let you catch anything but the briefest glimpses of its pulsating form.

But ... things improve. Once down in the open plains of Gran Pulse it emerges as a gem. The whole complexity of the battle and upgrade system is revealed. Suddenly there is a freedom, an energising sweep of landscape laid out before you. No longer the narrow, formless paths and generic enemies of the Cocoon starter-world.

Sure some of the characters are irritating, but Square haven't lost their knack for creating engaging stories and memorable environments just because they switched to current-generation consoles. With XIII-2 coming out early in the new year it's probably worth getting hold of FF13, if you're interested. Don't let the early drudgery put you off - the beast is eventually unleashed. I think it might be magnificent.