Metacritic's top rated games of 2012
The Walking Dead shuffles into first, but year deemed bad overall
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Jim Sterling, Reviews Editor
12:00 PM on 01.02.2013
Metacritic's top rated games of 2012 photo
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Metacritic has released its annual list of the top rated games of 2012, organizing its review averages to find which titles received the most critical acclaim throughout the last year.
Unsurprisingly, The Walking Dead took top honor with a score average of 95, followed by Persona 4 Golden and its 94. Mass Effect 3 took both third and fourth place for the PS3 and Xbox 360 version, respectively.
Though it honored the top scored games, Metacritic's editorial suggested 2012 was a bad year for quality games, claiming the amount of critically acclaimed titles "paled in comparison to recent years."
"Just 14 console games -- and 18 products overall, including PC and handheld (non-iOS) titles -- scored 90 or higher in 2012," wrote the site. "Those figures represent a huge drop from the previous year, when 23 console titles (and 32 games overall) met or exceeded the 90 mark. In fact, since we started publishing these year-end reports in 2009, we have never encountered such a low total number of great games in a single year."
Is this really the product of games dropping in quality, or critics getting more critical? That's the real question. While Metacritic deals in cold numbers, those numbers are still derived from the personal opinions of the reviewers, so I don't think we can start using these figures to factually assess the quality of the 2012's software.
That said, from a personal perspective, I found 2012 a bit underwhelming. There were some amazing games released, but as a reviewer, I gave more 1/10 scores than any other year, and wasn't able to dish out a single 10. I wasn't impressed by the industry's overall output this year, but it made the genuinely excellent titles a lot easier to single out, so that's something!
Here's Metacritic's top rated games of the year, in any case:
The Walking Dead: The Game (95)
Personal 4 Golden (94)
Mass Effect 3 PS3 (93)
Mass Effect 3 Xbox 360 (93)
Journey (92)
Xenoblade Chronicles (92)
Dishonored (91)
Mark of the Ninja (91)
Borderlands 2 (91)
Far Cry 3 PS3 (91)
Far Cry 3 Xbox 360 (90)
Trials Evolution (90)
Okami HD (90)
Mark of the Ninja (90)
FIFA Soccer 13 (90)
Guild Wars II (90)
NBA 2K13 (90)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (90)
The Best Videogames of 2012
↓ 7 user comments
by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor
December 31, 2012
A far cry from 2011's heights
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2012
The Walking Dead [Retail]
(360) 95
2011
Batman: Arkham City
(PS3) 96
2010
Super Mario Galaxy 2
(Wii) 97
2009
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) 96
2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
(PS3) 98
Metacritic's Game of the Year
(Highest-scoring title, min. 7 rev.)
It's a good thing that 2013 looks likely to be loaded with great games, because, as we look over this year's numbers, it seems 2012 wasn't. Not even the late arrival of a great new installment in Ubisoft's Far Cry series could make up for the fact that the past 12 months paled in comparison to recent years, at least at the high end of the scale.
Just 14 console games—and 18 products overall, including PC and handheld (non-iOS) titles—scored 90 or higher in 2012. Those figures represent a huge drop from the previous year, when 23 console titles (and 32 games overall) met or exceeded the 90 mark. In fact, since we started publishing these year-end reports in 2009, we have never encountered such a low total number of great games in a single year.
We also expect some grumbling about our Game of the Year award, given annually to the year's overall highest-scoring (i.e., best-reviewed) game for any platform. This year's honoree, Telltale's The Walking Dead 95 (Xbox 360), is a terrific adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic books. But it is also a retail repackaging (with a mere 9 reviews, at press time) of a game that was previously released online in five episodic installments throughout the year—installments which, though well-reviewed, never achieved an individual score north of 89. (There's also the issue of the retail version's reported buginess.) Still, without a solid reason to exclude it from consideration, its score qualifies it for Metacritic Game of the Year honors, even if it is the lowest-scoring such game since 2003 (when the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City topped the high score chart with a 94).
In the following pages, we'll reveal 2012's best-reviewed games for each platform. Before we do that, take a look at our quick comparison of the various game consoles:
