My Bottom Five of 2012

For a while there I couldn’t think of a fifth game I played in 2012 that was off-putting enough to make it onto this list. I was happy about that but given enough time and games I eventually had to debate over a few of them to determine which was the fifth biggest bummer.

Scarygirl was one of the first games I played in 2012 and it held the top spot without contention for a long while. Choplifter HD put up a good fight but in the end I played Scarygirl to completion and its frustrating platforming wins out over Choplifter’s mundane action. It’s a very pretty game to look at but immensely annoying to play through.

Then there’s Halo 4 which I honestly expected to be great. I’m not saying it’s a bad game by any means but it turned out to be more of the same Halo that I grew tired of nearly ten years ago. SimCity Social is another game I thought would be great, and it was… for a time. I don’t do much Facebook gaming so many of its hooks were enticing but the excessive force to pay real money or troll your friends for help turned me right off. It gets an honorary Ptooey award, my just-invented golden trophy of a giant glob of spit hitting someone in the face.

Least bummery of all (but still a bummer) is Double Dragon Neon. I’ve been put off by every WayForward game I’ve ever played so I wasn’t expecting Neon to suddenly change my mind. Still, I was hopeful. It looks slick, is full of self aware humor, has a great, equally aware soundtrack and the gameplay looks good on paper. In practice, though, it’s a nightmare. WayForward’s signature obsession with animation makes the game feel slow and overly difficult to control. Maybe that’s forgivable in a space sim but in a game that trades on a twitch, arcade legacy it’s pretty distasteful.