2012 was a weird time for video game consoles. The ill-fated PlayStation Vita launched worldwide after arriving in Japan the year before, while the equally ill-fated Wii U released around the same time. We were at the tail end of a console generation – the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One would only launch in 2013.
But there were plenty of games still coming out for the consoles we already had, many of which had an incredible impact on the industry as we know it today. Let’s get into it and why you’d want some of these bangers under your Christmas tree.
PlayStation Vita
I don’t know anybody who owned or even asked for a PlayStation Vita (or a Wii U) for Christmas. Most people were perfectly happy with their Wiis and PlayStation Portables – two incredibly popular consoles that are still held in high esteem. If you did ask for a Vita, though, it was probably to play Persona 4 Golden. Let’s be real, there was nothing else worth playing on that darn thing.
The Usual Suspects
Naturally, we saw a whole bunch of franchises adding new instalments, so you probably asked for those. That includes the typical sports games like NBA, FIFA, and MLB, but also Call of Duty, Pokemon, Super Mario Bros., Sonic and RPG behemoth Final Fantasy. I’m sure I missed your favourite, there were a lot.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was, as per usual, the best selling game of the year, meaning that statistically, you asked for it. I distinctly remember playing FIFA 13 at a friend’s house after finishing my exams that year, and also watching with jealousy as my brother played Pokemon Black 2 on his DS, a handheld we were supposed to share but never really did.
Diablo 3
Diablo 3 was a great game, and also one of the first major recipients of backlash over always-online DRM. This didn’t stop players from buying the hell (haha) out of it, though – it’s one of the fastest selling PC games to date of all time. One of my friends used to play it with her dad, so that’s two copies under their tree already.
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Mass Effect 3
The critically acclaimed conclusion to one of BioWare’s most iconic trilogies launched in March, which means you might already have gotten the game and like many fans, disappointed by how it all shook out. Critics loved it though, for whatever that’s worth – it was one of the highest-rated games of 2012, won a whole bunch of awards, and is considered by many to be one of the best video games of all time. If you had taste, you probably asked Santa to hook you up.
Dishonored
This is one on the list that I actually begged my parents for a copy of, but only after I got my PS4 a couple years later. Arkane’s iconic action-adventure game revitalised the immersive sim genre, was a true stealth game in an era where those had largely fallen out of fashion, and has also been listed as one of the best games of the decade. God, it’s so good. I should play it again this Christmas.
Note: While reading the game’s Wikipedia page, I also discovered that 2021’s Deathloop (another very good game) takes place in the same universe, but in a far-flung future.
Borderlands 2
Borderlands 2 was much better than Borderlands. While the series is very dated now, at the time, its edgy millennial humour was a hit with critics and fans, and it also happened to be the perfect game to play with friends, making it a serious contender for prime Christmas gaming. I know someone who’s still playing it – she tried to rope me into a campaign last year. I politely declined.
You won’t have a new Borderlands game to put under your tree till next year, but if you want to punish your family for some long-ago transgression, you can force them to watch the movie adaptation with you after dinner. After all, it’s not like any of them saw it in theaters.
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The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game
I played the hell out of these in 2012, and so did millions of others – 28 million people by July 2014, to be precise. With this series, Telltale essentially created a new genre, the Telltale-like, that’s relatively light on mechanical depth but hugely focused on choice and consequence as a driver of excellent storytelling. Developers, triple-A and independent alike, have been drawing inspiration from it ever since.
The complete retail version launched in North America just two weeks before Christmas. If you believed in the storytelling power of video games, you probably wanted this, and desperately. I know I did.
The Best of the Rest
There were a lot of other excellent games released in 2012, many of which didn’t do as well commercially (and therefore were unlikely to have been beneath your tree) but cemented themselves as cult classics years after release. Lollipop Chainsaw, which received a bad remaster this year, was a huge inspiration for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. It wasn’t a perfect game, and received mixed reviews, but it’s got its fans.
Sleeping Dogs, best known as Grand Theft Auto if everybody was cursing you out in Cantonese instead of English, is very close to my heart, partly because my mother sometimes also yells at me in Cantonese. Widely praised by critics, it sold 1.5 million units by September 2012, but somehow still didn’t meet Square Enix’s sales expectations, which is probably why its sequel was cancelled. Bring Sleeping Dogs back, you cowards.
Dragon’s Dogma sold very well in Japan but struggled in Western market, so you might not have been hankering to unwrap it on Christmas day, depending on how much you loved Japanese games. It still had enough impact to warrant this year’s sequel regardless, which a lot of us at TheGamer liked.
And lastly, Hotline Miami. One of the now ubiquitous Devolver Digital’s earliest games, the frenetic indie wasn’t just critically successful, it was financially successful too. Its success directly pushed the growth of the indie game dev scene, popularised a whole new genre of music (synthwave, specifically), and has also aged like fine wine – my housemates bought the game a couple weeks ago so they could sit on the couch and take turns playing it. It’s ruining my life, they’re screaming at the TV all night long. You may not have been into indies in 2012, but you better be playing them now. I recommend I Am Your Beast if you enjoy Hotline Miami’s frantic mass-murdering vibe.
