Horace has no end. Only a beginning.

December 25, 2011 10:12 PM

24 games of Christmas, the Amazing Rock Paper Shotgun Advent Calendar. "Here are the rules of the calendar: 1. The games are in no particular order, except number 24, which is our game of the year. 2. That means that number 5 and number 17 are on an equal footing as a game of the Christmas, do you see?"
posted by Sebmojo (16 comments total)

I'm going to recommend this game in every single videogame thread until people play it.
posted by empath at 10:21 PM on December 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Considering that Skyrim is their number one, here's a really interesting criticism of the game from /v/. I thought Skyrim was far from perfect but still pretty great, but having an totally unnumbered list except for the fact that skyrim was the best is a really weird system.
posted by Rinku at 11:38 PM on December 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think the lazy nerd snark in that /v/ link answers your question about the reason why they don't want to have 24 opportunities for people to argue why one game is better than another.
posted by Sebmojo at 11:43 PM on December 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

"Guys! Didn't you hear me? Stop having fun!"
posted by straight at 11:55 PM on December 25, 2011

Bear in mind they were revealing one game a day in the advent calendar, so it kinda makes sense that they're not in any particular order of merit. Besides, so many games that are otherwise great may not be if you're not a fan of that genre.

I did find having to click through each article into the details (on a slow mobile connection) to find out which game was a bit annoying though, and gave up around day 8. Was kinda hoping they'd do an unobfusticated list after xmas.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:58 AM on December 26, 2011

I think Skyrim doesn't /quite/ deserve to be number one, but I'm not in a rage that it is so; I think, of the AAA games, Deus Ex:HR probably surpasses it on at least a narrative level, which is what I care about most. It doesn't mean that Skyrim wasn't enjoyable — I've already put something like 100 hours into it — but I would say that one of them is probably going to be more memorable in six months than the other.

...then again, it might be Skyrim due to the mod community.

Aside from that, though, I'd like to say that I like RPS pretty much always. And for you, Merry Christmas, ArkhanJG:

1. Total War: Shogun 2
2. Don’t Take it Personally Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story
3. Serious Sam 3: BFE
4. The Witcher 2
5. The Dream Machine
6. Orcs Must Die
7. Cthulhu Saves The World
8. Battlefield 3
9. Saints Row: The Third
10. Portal 2
11. Fate of the World
12. Terraria
13. Batman: Arkham City
14. Dead Island
15. Realm of the Mad God
16. The Binding of Isaac.
17. Rage
18. Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
19. To The Moon
20. Dungeons Of Dredmor
21. Bastion
22. SpaceChem
23. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
24. Skyrim

Which is to say, interestingly, 12 indie games and 12 triple-A productions. Also, I didn't include links because you can just click the numbers in Sebmojo's linkpost.
posted by Han Tzu at 1:12 AM on December 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'm playing Skyrim, and it is fun, but often tedious. As a game, I don't think it really compares (for me) to a game like Terraria, which was nonstop fun and never tedious (except, maybe, when I had to get my equipment out of the corruption after dying...). I would not have picked Skyrim as game of the year.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 3:35 AM on December 26, 2011

Thanks for that Han Tzu. I'm not sure I care enough to click through the lazy graphic RPS has used to camoflague a simple list post, or have the stomach to wade through the typical faux-hipster snark of their writing "style".
posted by datter at 4:12 AM on December 26, 2011

I have never heard of The Dream Machine before, never mind played it, and it looks like I'm going to have to remedy that post-haste.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:41 AM on December 26, 2011

Skyrim's biggest problem for me is that, while a lot of the individual quest chains end up feeling pretty epic, because of the "open world, do everything in any order you want" nature of the game nothing you do really changes anything.
posted by graventy at 9:36 AM on December 26, 2011

Thanks for that Han Tzu. I'm not sure I care enough to click through the lazy graphic RPS has used to camoflague a simple list post, or have the stomach to wade through the typical faux-hipster snark of their writing "style".

Boy, it sure seems like "hipster" is starting to mean "any person I don't like for any reason whatsoever."

This comment is the only snark I see in this post. If you don't like Rock Paper Shotgun, that's fine, but to completely dismiss the entire site over criteria as completely meaningless as "typical faux-hipster snark" is ridiculous. RPS is one of the few gaming blogs I can stomach, because it doesn't deal in the cynisicm and fanboy-pandering of a Kotaku or Destructoid. John, Alec, Jim, Kireon, Quinn, and Adam are all excellent writers. They actually think about the games they're playing. If you don't like the way they write, that's fine, that's your problem, but they do have a house style, not a "style," and they are not hipsters, faux- or otherwise.
posted by JimBennett at 9:45 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Thanks for that Han Tzu. I'm not sure I care enough to click through the lazy graphic RPS has used to camoflague a simple list post

To be faire, each post in this "camoflaged" list is longer and more thought out than your typical "top-10 JRPG" (OMFG CRONO TRIGGER!) post.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:54 AM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

They couldn't give Lydia more than ONE inventory sharing wisecrack? Or like, just silence every other time? Did they have anyone playtest this with the sound on because I am about to murder the everloving crap out of her
posted by danny the boy at 2:31 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

To be faire, each post in this "camoflaged" list is longer and more thought out than your typical "top-10 JRPG" (OMFG CRONO TRIGGER!) post.

Hey! You there! Stop kicking that dead genre. That stopped being cool in 2008, when it was already a decade late. Let those people keep their rose tinted glasses; it's all they have.
posted by byanyothername at 4:09 PM on December 26, 2011

Well I did spend post-holiday-season 2008 beating Dragon (Warrior|Quest) IV, so I think I'm around half-part of the JRPG fanclub.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 10:05 PM on December 26, 2011

I used to think Skyrim was the best game of the year too. Then I took an arrow in the knee.

It's been a good year for indie PC games with low system requirements; I've sunk more hours than I should probably have into Terarria and the Binding of Isaac.
posted by whir at 7:12 PM on December 27, 2011