This year has had its share of ups and downs, with some greats and some not so great games. Take a look at our Best Xbox 360 Games of 2012 – the first in a series of “Best of 2012…” articles on VGU! In no particular order we have:
The baby of the Microsoft console, Halo 4 had to make it on to our list. The story continues with the start of the new Reclaimer series, seeing the Chief pick up from the ending of Halo 3 with a whole new enemy to fight. Featuring a gripping and emotional narrative and an epic audio soundtrack, Halo 4 is truly an experience to play. At times it makes you worry, and at times it can even make you cry. It also features some superb voice-acting and motion cap work, specifically with Cortana as we find out she’s slowly slipping into madness in her old age. If you want know more about the game you can check out our Halo 4 review which gives you a lot more details and reasons why we think this is one heck of an epic game to end 2012 with.
Need I describe how awesome Borderlands 2 was? While the first installment might have been good, this has something that it doesn’t: Handsome Jack. Voted the ‘Best Performance in a Human Male’ in the VGA’s 2012 and Best Villain in the VGU 2012 awards, Jack is truly a character you want to kill by the end of the game. And that isn’t all: the performances from all the characters are amazing and unique as you would expect. Tiny Tina still concerns me to this day, talking about my ‘badonkadonk’ and how I have ‘a booty like pow’, and who can forget the iconic Claptrap? Yes the annoying little bugger is back. Plus add 17 bazillion guns, 2 released expansions (one including a whole variety of badassitude and explosions) and the same great multiplayer, Borderlands 2 definitely deserves to be one of the best xbox games of the year. As well as the game itself, Gearbox have been giving away Golden Keys which get you even better loot in the mystery ‘Gold Chest’ in Sanctuary, and these were all free!
Capcom did well with this fantasy-action-RPG, which sees the rebirth of an ancient dragon who eats your heart, causing you to return as the Arisen and seek out your yummy heart. It’s an epic story full of giant battles against mythical monsters like a Hydra who you can climb and slash the heck out of. As well as a pretty epic story, it features a pawn system which lets you enlist AI characters created by other players as your helper! You have one permanent helper (who may get a little annoying, but you’ll appreciate them being there) and two other helpers to create your team of awesome. You’ll fight trolls, ogres and many more monsters in a gorgeous world which is reminiscant of Skyrim’s beautiful lands. What’s more you can customise your character both in terms of appearance and class, and can even become hybrid classes later on. If you haven’t played it yet then I would suggest checking it out!
The way this was described was GTA in China with great melee and gun combat and a pretty solid story to boot. The main character isn’t like you would expect – you play as an undercover cop with plenty of experience in both the US and Hong Kong who returns home to try and get the criminal enterprises under control. Not interested yet? How about a unique levelling system with three main areas: Cop, Triad and Face. These are upgraded with experience points (as per usual) and are rewarded based on how you react to people in the game as well as how much gore you can manage in a fight. Face has everything to do with how Hong Kong feels about you, so it’s a pretty important factor. Don’t forget the melee combat system which allows you to use kitchen knives, pipes and nightsticks, as well as the guns (which are fewer and further between if you read reviews!) You pretty quickly find yourself being drawn into a complicated plot with twists and turns.
And last but not least we thought Minecraft Xbox 360 Version deserved to be on the list. It’s a huge thing for Minecraft to have leapt from the tiny indie game it used to be onto a big Microsoft console, and it’s even bigger to be received as well as it has. Granted when it came out it was quite a while behind the PC version, but with regular updates and patches it’s pretty close in terms of content now. So whether you’re wanting to build your ultimate fortress of doom, go hunting for Nether Fortresses and Strongholds or just act like a humble farmer (personally I do a mixture of everything) Minecraft is the perfect game. It’s great for serious and casual games of all ages with an incredibly simple premise: the world is what you build. If you want to build a replica of New York, you can. Just remember to listen out for the “hhhssssSSSSSSSSSS”!
There you have it folks: VGU’s 5 Best Xbox 360 Games of 2012. Don’t agree with our choices? Give us a comment below! We love comments.