Gamers Heroes Game of the Year Awards 2012

This section of our Game of the Year Awards is all about genres. What’s the best shooter of 2012? What’s the best RPG? What’s the best Indie Title? We cover almost all of them, all of the important ones at least. If we missed one of your favorite genres, make sure to hit us up in the comments or the forums.

An indie gem, a deal steal and a fantastic game all around, FTL spread wild through word of mouth. This rogue like space sim is addicting and frustrating at the same time. The amazing thing about FTL is that it can be played at your own leisure, but somehow it always feels frantic. Smashing the space bar to pause and un-pause is thrilling, somehow. Finding every little trick, understanding the weapons systems and building up a crew to take on the next quest or baddie just to be sent back to the beginning is a hard lesson to learn, but it is the lesson that FTL teaches. And that lesson has been taught to a large number of people because FTL is fantastic.

After all the hullabaloo with Mass Effect 3’s ending it is hard to remember that the journey and mechanics were actually fantastic. No amount of Kinect controls or colored light endings will take away the conversations about the encounters from loved characters. No matter what class you took and specialization there was major RPG level up mechanics that lead everyone to feel like their Shepard was their own. The introduction of the horde like multiplayer also gave plenty of legs to the game that has been supported very well by BioWare. Although there was some negative press from the ending, we at Gamers Heroes still feel like this was the RPG most deserving of the award.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown captured one of our editor’s attentions for quite a while. The game successfully bridges a gap between bringing new players to the turn based strategy genre while at the same time doing a huge fan service. There is in depth battle mechanics and a large meta game that keeps players busy for a long time. Always calculating, always weighing options, XCOM makes you think constantly in a good way. Everything about this game screams “one more turn” which turns into 6 hours of one more turns. If you haven’t checked out XCOM: Enemy Unknown, there is a ton of holiday sales for all consoles and the game is worth every penny.

Need for Speed has been one of the longest running racing series around. If you love racing, I would be willing to bet, you love at least one Need for Speed game. Some people felt like the single player campaign was not the best for Need for Speed. What the single player lacked in, the multiplayer made up for by miles. Making racers race to the starting line, compete in competitive and co-operative game plays and an extensive unlock system

As much as everyone wants to crap on the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops 2 inspired to be a little bit different from the rest. The shooting mechanics however stayed the same and still feel great. The snappy aim that comes from 60 FPS can hardly be matched by anyone else around. The Multiplayer is probably the best it has been since the original Modern Warfare with completely customizable classes that don’t feel cheap or unbalanced. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, while still feeling a little old, is still the king of the shooter genre.

Loot, loot and more loot! The rush you get every time you open a chest, every time you finish a mission and come across loot in Borderlands 2 is intensified when you get into multiplayer. The system may not be far off from the original Borderlands but it is still addicting. Combo-ing powers off of each other and working together works perfectly without reading a bunch of tutorials or having to head to Wikipedia to find the best matches. Everything in Borderlands 2 screams teamwork and we loved it.

The original Guild Wars shook the MMO world with their innovation in pricing model. Guild Wars 2 did the same thing, except by changing gameplay mechanics that have been in place in MMO’s for years. The customization of classes with different weapons gives players a reason to change up their gameplay all of the time. Guild Wars 2 also has giant world events that encourage large numbers of players to work together in interesting ways. The game all around, to us at Gamers Heroes, brought all of the best things from MMO’s and made them work right, other than the auction house until a week or so after the game launched. Still with the small number of problems compared to other MMO’s, Guild Wars 2 wins out this category.

The number of puzzles, the difficulty and the joy of playing Crashmo is something special. At $8 this downloadable title for the 3DS may be one of the best games for the platform all together. The best part about Crashmo, is that it is a competent sequel of Pushmo. The game could have easily been an easy cash grab and more of the same, but it’s not. The puzzle genre has been gone in a lot of people’s minds, but the Nintendo Published Crashmo and Pushmo has brought a ton of people back in.

Rayman Jungle Run took the beauty and charm of the console and put it on the phone. While at face value it looks like a runner, the intuitive way the game interprets intent made the game feel like a full-fledged console release. The music is still cheery and fun with a colorful score. There is also replay ability in each level trying to collect everything to get backgrounds and what not for your phone. Rayman Jungle Run is showing other games how to bring popular console franchises to the iPhone and Android Play Market.

Check out the next page for the most disappointing, underappreciated and best game of the year!