Journey

Genova Chen and his studio turned out to be amazing – to tell a delightfully beautiful and smart story without words. The story of a little traveler, who wanders to the high grief on the horizon through the deserts, abandoned cities, terrible caves and frozen mountain muffles. No matter what.

Journey It is so harmonious in everything that it is even difficult to talk about its elements separately. Visual series, soundtrack, gameplay – everything works in unison.

Firstly, you will wander around the desert for a long time-at this moment loneliness is known, you feel the game, you will have a feeling of waiting. So the adventure begins. Exactly at the peak of anticipation, you will meet surrealist creatures that will become your most expensive friends until the very end. Then, after meeting with the world, you will be allowed deeper. Locals will imbue you with sympathy, will play with you incomprehensible, but such funny games. And a second before the joy would become fresh, the emotion will change to the opposite. You will fall into dusty silent caves and experience fear. Then – panic. Then, closer to the end, – despair and grief. And … revive like a phoenix from ashes, in the finale.

This is not a game. This is a carousel of emotions. She gradually leads the player through the chain of completely different, sometimes even opposite emotions, but invariably breaks them before they manage to get tired. That is why the game lasts only two to three hours.

The Journey world is a whole bizarre ecosystem, the most real world that can only be imagined. And even the joint passage does not spoil it, because the players have only one means for communication – sounds that the creature can make. So even one who regularly rude to everyone in game chats will be cute and calm.

Yes, Journey is an exclusive for PS3, and not everyone will be able to play it. However, this is the case when it is necessary to ask for a visit to a friend who has a console from Sony, or even find a girl with a prefix, start dating her, play Journey and then part. Just because it is the best that happened to video games in 2012. Simply because Journey makes it possible to feel what we are all wealthy. She forces me to love life and people around, gives a sense of harmony and satisfaction, tears out of reality. After it you cry with happiness and grief at the same time.

Journey from beginning to end is unique. This is not a new word in some genre there, but a new word outside of all genres. New word in interactive art.

And so Journey is the game of the year, according to "Gambling.ru ". No matter what.

Second place

Far Cry 3

In second place was firmly strengthened Far Cry 3 – The best action movie, the best sandbox and just the best game of those that you can play on all platforms in the year. The project is not that breakthrough or original – no, it consists entirely of the elements we know. But each individually works just amazing, and all of them together fold into one big, bright adventure.

The solar tropical island looks exactly so that it wants to spend the rest of his life on it. The abundance of side tasks and all kinds of activity, such as hunting for wild animals, shootings with pirates and study of secret -shaped clocks, fill this life with meaning. And even the goal set for the main character – to find and help out captive friends – is pushed to the background, it is worth feeling the spirit of freedom and permissiveness reigning here.

The sandbox in Far Cry 3 is good for the marvelous. They don’t impose anything on you, even in plot missions you can choose your own way of solving problems. If you want-screaming and fingering into the bandit camp, you want-eliminate the opponents quietly, using a simple but effective Stealth mechanic, if you want-take off all from afar or get into the nearest car and wind the opponents on the wheels. You can even bring a crocodile and unobtrusively to steal with opponents.

But the game does not turn into "entertain yourself". Each situation is unique in its own way, what is happening perfectly, and you do not have to deal with the feeling that the whole world is spinning around you. The island lives on its own routine, in which we, players, are simply allowed to intervene sometimes.

In addition to the sandbox, there is still a lot of things here. Really fascinating shootings in which the weapon shoots so that the eyes flare up. A small role -playing additive that allows you to grow skills and improve equipment. Delightful plot missions – perhaps the best escape scene in the Games at the beginning and to crazy triples in the wilds of the subconscious. Charming characters with extremely live eyes (a small breakthrough in terms of graphics, by the way) and unable types. And the plot about young extremal, who had to speak alone against the hordes of bandits, is not as simple as it might seem at first glance.

It remains to add another line about the good cooperative for four, with a separate plot, and the image can be considered completed. Far Cry 3 is a huge comprehensive game, which can be held with great pleasure for many hours, and most of the complaints to it boil down to “I have little”. She came out of the last of all AAA projects in a year, no one expected anything special from her-and then on you! Luxurious surprise for players.

Third place

The Walking Dead

Nobody expected a miracle from Telltale Games. The seasonal game broken into episodes could well have lost among large projects. Neither the loud name nor the army of fans help. We know how hard it is to meet a good game under a license. But this time the notorious law of a falling sandwich did not work.

The main feature of the universe of the "walking" has always been emotionality, interesting and memorable characters and, of course, fatal turns in the fate of heroes. And all this in the best light is revealed in each of the five episodes. A small segment of the life of the criminal Lee Everett and the restless girl Clementine turned out to be so rich in events that their echoes will remain in our memory for a long time. We sympathized, hoped for a happy finale and all this time, holding his breath, walked with the heroes hand in hand in the wreckage of the civilized world.

It is the strongest effect of empathy and complicity in the fate of the characters that distinguishes The Walking Dead From the other games of the outgoing year. Rejoice, be sad, horrified and even crying with virtual people-probably someone will seem strange to someone, but this is how the time passes behind computer "walking". However, the main minus lies right there – when compared with Journey, which has climbed the first line. Both games are based on emotional resonance, but if in Journey a stream of high matters envelops the player constantly, not allowing you to take a breath, then The Walking Dead is not devoid of emotional calm, during which nothing interesting happens. In places, the plot spring pushes us further, but you have to sit still or wander around the tight nooks in search of another active point – the legacy of the quests, which suddenly turned out to be completely superfluous in the game.

Nevertheless, this is one of the games of the year – because the drama, because the production is, because the plot is, because the dialogs, because https://mr-vegas-casino.co.uk/ – cinema. The Walking Dead proves that a good, smart movie plot can be written for an interactive form of art and at the same time take millions of players around the world.

The material was worked: Alexander Pushkar, Oleg Chimde, Sergey Opovlovanov