Eurogamer's Game of the Year 2012

It’s been kind of an angry year, you know? First everyone went mental about the end of Mass Effect 3, driving BioWare’s founders into exile and appointing the internet as lead designer of the next one. Then E3 rolled around and every new trailer was like Saw vs. Hostel, the peak of which was Sam Fisher wiggling a knife around in someone’s shoulder (presumably it’s “Better with Kinect”, too), and of course at around the same time Square Enix began to establish itself as the discerning choice for the discriminating gamer. Then there was that other business…

That’s one take on the year, anyway. But there were plenty of other ways to look at it. It was also the year of the roguelike, thanks to games like Spelunky, FTL and ZombiU. It was the year of the loot-runner, thanks to Borderlands 2, Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3. And it was the year of skulking expertly through the shadows, thanks to Dishonored and Mark of the Ninja. There were brighter times for the battered racing genre as well, thanks to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Ridge Racer Unbounded and particularly thanks to Forza Horizon. We even saw some convincing, economical storytelling, thanks to games like The Walking Dead, 30 Flights of Loving and Journey.

Then there were two new console launches. The Wii U and PlayStation Vita haven’t exactly exploded out of the blocks, but they are already bringing us a mixture of unique new experiences and the comfort of old friends. 2012 also saw Kickstarter go from 0-60 (or, in Tim Schafer’s case, $0 to $3,336,371), while free-to-play started to shake off its dodgy reputation with help from games like Tribes Ascend. And it was another 12 months without a new generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles – or any substantial news about them – which was felt everywhere.

You can paint 2012 any way you like, then. And even if your chosen paint was blood and guts and your brush was the barrel of a gun or the blade of a sword, there was still plenty to commend. Sure, there was exploitative trash here and about, but there was also Halo 4’s haunting salute to Cortana, Dishonored’s redemptive hands-free crawl through the bleached streets of Dunwall, and the psychotic sprinting disco fever dreams of Hotline Miami.

So yes, it was kind of an angry year. But it was also imaginative, funny, experimental, poignant, humble, preachy, bold, brave and colourful.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that our 2012 Game of the Year brought together many of the different ideas and themes that made up the year as a whole. As you’ll see from the testimonials that follow from some of the Eurogamer staff who voted for it, it also drew a range of reactions, each of which is truly heartfelt. That feeling of being personally affected by a game is more common with small-scale developments, of course – the connection between individual creators and players can be diluted when there are several hundred people plugging their work into one production – but this game was uncommonly intelligent and coherent. It’s a precisely engineered game with a singular vision that’s as old as games itself, and everyone who plays it feels like it’s been made just for them.

As voted by our staff and contributors, then, I’m very pleased to say that Eurogamer’s Game of the Year for 2012 is Fez.

Simon Parkin was prolific in 2012, penning some amazing investigative reports – including Who Spilled Hot Coffee? and Death By Gaming on the Taiwan cafe fatalities – and reviewing plenty of big games including Resident Evil 6 and Halo 4.

“At times it seemed as though the noise surrounding Fez might drown out the game’sown voice,” says Simon. “There were the controversial outbursts from creator Phil Fish in the press; the rumours of vicious infighting during development; the endless delays and, of course, the big-shot movie documenting the struggling creator’s days as his life fell apart around the game in painful slow-motion.