Sony hardware will get copious amounts of pixelated ultra-violence this spring.

Publisher Devolver Digital announced today that it will release the 2D murder simulator Hotline Miami from developer Dennaton Games on Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita systems. The game is currently only available on PC. The PS3 and Vita versions debut this spring.

“Our team have been fans of Hotline Miami from the very start, and we are absolutely thrilled to have such a brilliant game launch on the PlayStation platform,” Sony senior business development manager Shahid Ahmad said in a statement. “The intense visuals and pulsing soundtrack are perfectly suited for PS3 and PS Vita, and we can’t wait for PlayStation fans to see what Hotline Miami is all about.”

Dutch developer Abstraction Games will handle the porting responsibilities for Hotline Miami. The title is also part of Sony’s Cross-Buy initiative, which means gamers can buy it just once for the PS3 and get the Vita version for free.

“The Devolver Digital team is hyped to see Hotline Miami hit PS3 and PS Vita,” Devolver Digital chief financial officer Fork Parker said. “However, this cross-buy thing might prohibit me from achieving my long-standing dream of wearing a gold plated PS Vita around my neck. Total bummer.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you’re a developer, you should have a good elevator pitch for your project. A quick spiel that gets across the appeal of your game in the time it takes to ride a lift up a few floors. But if you’re a small indie studio headed to the upcoming Game Developers Conference, then you should work on your shuttle-bus pitch.

Publisher Devolver Digital announced today that it is returning to GDC in San Francisco this year with its Pitch Fork Parker initiative, a shuttle bus for indie devs to get a ride and pitch their games at the same time. Of course, GDC week (March 25-29) is crazy busy, so Devolver is also offering to meet with indies wherever is convenient for them.

Last year, developer Chris Pavia took a ride on the Pitch Fork Parker, which ended with him signing on to work with Devolver as publisher for his Dungeon Hearts role-playing puzzle game.

“Devolver Digital has given me opportunities that would have been nearly impossible to get on my own as a new, unknown developer,” said Pavia. “Dungeon Hearts wouldn’t be half the game it is now without their support. Also, they give the best back rubs.”

Dungeon Hearts is a match-3 puzzle game with RPG elements for PC, Mac, and iOS.

“Chris came on the bus at GDC,” Devolver vice president of marketing Nigel Lowrie told GamesBeat. “He pitched the game to us. We felt it was one of those unique ideas that we hadn’t really seen before, but it wasn’t just the game. His spirit and passion for it — we really latched on to that.”

They latched on to it so deeply that Devolver contacted Pavia later the same night to ask Pavia  if he wanted to work with them.

“It’s come full circle because [Dungeon Hearts] is probably going to launch right around the same time as GDC,” said Lowrie. “So a year later he has a finished game coming out on Steam and iOS, and we’re really excited to gear up our marketing campaign.”

Devolver is hoping to re-create that same kind of magic at this year’s GDC, and it just started taking requests for meetings.

Studios interested in some face time with the the company can email Devolver’s chief financial officer Fork Parker at fork@devolverdigital.com. As with Dungeon Hearts and Hotline Miami, Devolver is just looking for something different.

“I was under the impression that being ‘developer friendly’ just meant buying them dinner, drinks, and possibly a sensual massage,” Parker said in a statement. “But our business development team is more in favor of honesty, integrity, and creative freedom so — you know — whatever.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Hello, and a merry end of 2012 to you all. It’s been a grand year for video games and for those of us who choose to wile away our time playing them. Many of us have already celebrated the finest games of the last 12 months, so now it’s time to dig a little deeper into 2012′s catalog of hits and misses. Here’s where we champion things like dancing, sex, boss machinations, terrible assassins, and great use of taxpayer money in video games.

Onward with haste.

(Polite heads up: I’ve done my best to avoid major spoilers, but as this is a retrospective look at the year gone by, some minor spoilers have tiptoed in. Use the shield of common sense. The final award should not be read by anyone who hasn’t finished Dishonored.)

Worst dancer

Winner: Commander Shepherd (Mass Effect 3)

Video game animation has come a long way in a short time, but we’re still unable to put the sexy into dancing. Despite that, 2012 played host to its fair share of gyrating twits. The gang from Far Cry 3, Marcelo from Max Payne 3, and the dancers from Hitman: Absolution all put forward solid cases, but Commander Shepherd had this one wrapped up way back in March.

Shepherd not only displayed the dance-floor swagger of a beached humpback whale, he also chose to do his dancing while the entire galaxy slipped into the inky abyss. Nice one, S-dog. Your embarrassing dad dance moves almost cost mankind and its best friends everything.

Best (or worst) line of dialogue

Winner: Chap in strip bar (Hitman: Absolution)

I swear to you — this is something I heard. I was playing the strip bar level in Hitman: Absolution, prowling through the drooling masses, when I heard a man cry out from the swarm:

“I’m going to wear your ass like a hat!”

I just don’t have it in me to make that up.

Best use of taxpayer money

Winner: The Chicago Police Department (Hitman: Absolution)

Back in 2010, the Seacrest County Police Department bagged this award for using taxpayer money to fund the manufacture of Lamborghini patrol cars — a crime made worse by the fact that the SCPD didn’t just use them to chase down crooks but also to create roadblocks, which the crooks naturally plowed through at 250 mph.

In 2011, the Steelport Police Department won for what was the equivalent of nuking Steelport from orbit each time the player did a little dance in front of an officer.

So it’s only right that this year’s prize goes to another incompetent police department. Hitman: Absolution’s Chicago PD proved nothing if not dedicated to cleaning up the streets of Chicago. At one point midway through the game, roughly a dozen of Chicago’s finest open fire on Agent 47. It’s a perfectly executed maneuver bar one minor hiccup: the 84 civilians sprawled face down in the wet as a result of misplaced bullets. Oops.

Worst game

Winner: Ninja Gaiden 3

There aren’t many developers who can say they’ve had easier jobs than Team Ninja. Under the guidance of Tomonobu Itagaki, the Japanese developer perfected its fighting formula with the first 3D Ninja Gaiden. For Ninja Gaiden 3, an Itagaki-less Team Ninja took the old formula round the back of the shed and gave it the 12-gauge treatment. In its place arrived a crude and unsatisfying combat system coupled with a grueling cinematic camera that ducked and dived like an 8-year-old recording a distant ship with a handycam while on a dinghy in a monsoon. Oh, and there was a bit where a little girl asked Ryu Hayabusa to be her daddy. Good grief.

How Team Ninja bungled Ninja Gaiden 3 is beyond my comprehension, but it was far and away the worst game I played in 2012.

Best (or worst) scene of a sexual nature

Winner: Lucius (game)

Six-year-old Lucius wanders unsuspecting into a bedroom to catch his uncle playing hide the sausage with the maid. Rather than stop and explain what happens when a man and a woman love each other very much, the two continue at it in full view of Lucius. It’s game over for the player, but not before Lucius gets a good view of his uncle’s throbbing joystick.

Most inane boss machination

Winner: Richard Attenborough (Ninja Gaiden 3)

Ninja Gaiden 3 was an inordinately stupid game with an inordinately stupid antagonist. Gaiden’s mastermind villain had cloned dinosaurs on a jungle island, but unlike Richard Attenborough, Gaiden’s baddie planned to deploy his dinos in a bid to end the world. Fair enough. On the scale of bad ideas, using dinosaurs to destroy Earth falls somewhere between using tissue paper as toilet roll and bringing a blow-up hammer to a knife fight. But by the Gaiden yardstick, it was a relatively spiceless scheme — at least, until the antagonist told Ryu Hayabusa he was also going to sell the dinosaurs to children as pets. Just take that in for a moment.

They say if you put a monkey in a room for all eternity, eventually it will write the complete works of Shakespeare. I say, if you put a monkey in a room for 15 minutes, you’ll get the script to Ninja Gaiden 3 with 82 percent fewer MacGuffins.

Failed assassin

Winner: Agent 47 (Hitman: Absolution)
Runner-up: Ada Wong (Resident Evil 6)

With disguises no longer foolproof and levels roughly the size of a grass snake’s anus, Agent 47 needed a new trick to help him skulk by his enemies. The answer? Taking cues from the Naughty Bear School of Stealth, Agent 47 placed his hand over his face. No, really. Probably the most remarkable thing about 47′s newfangled trick was it worked every time (so long as 47′s magic bar was full). Chicago’s finest, hired goons, and even SWAT patrols were hoodwinked the moment Agent 47 — a bald numpty with an enormous scar etched into the back of his head — raised a hand over his face.

A special mention also goes to Resident Evil 6′s Ada Wong. Ada’s first mission saw her infiltrate a submarine and engage in some light stealth against Killzone’s Helghan soldiers. One of the mission objectives was simply, “Don’t draw attention to yourself.” Thing is, with Ada’s low-cut top and skin-tight leather trousers, not drawing attention proved incredibly tough.

Worst dogs

Winner: Hotline Miami
Runner-up: Mark of the Ninja

I lovingly dubbed Hotline Miami “Disco-Mordor” (for obvious reasons) when I reviewed it back in October. Cutthroat, ungenerous, and bloody excellent, Dennaton’s top-down action hit was one of my favorites of the year. But its pooches … dear lord, its pooches. Miami’s mutts had a lust for human flesh and a knack for rocketing out from just offscreen, making them the most bastard-annoying bastards of the year. Sure, you could don a mask and transform them into abiding canines, but then the pendulum swung the other way, and they were suddenly the victims of your callous hate. You couldn’t win with Hotline Miami’s dogs.

Best couple

Winner: Juliet & Nick (Lollipop Chainsaw)

Lollipop Chainsaw was as unloved as Goichi Suda’s other recent (and probably better) game Shadows of the Damned. While the blow-by-blow bedlam was enjoyable enough on its own, the lead characters were what gave Lollipop Chainsaw its soul. The chitchat between Juliet and her bodiless boyfriend Nick was sharp as they bickered, flirted, and sliced through the carnage with humorous quips. The result? You got the sense you were watching the drama of a genuine relationship amidst all the soaring limbs and gore geysers. Aww.

Bleakest game world

Winner: I Am Alive
Runner-ups: Day Z and Nintendo Land

I Am Alive is an early 2012 Xbox Live Arcade title that severed opinion in spectacular fashion. It may not have been the most polished game of the year, but Ubisoft sure did bleak with panache.

Haverton was a spiteful and uncaring place, painted in stark greys and home only to those robbed of their humanity. During one particularly memorable scene, two men hunched over a fire offered you a hunk of meat. It was an alarmingly selfless gesture from characters caught in a world that had, until that point, offered only sadists, a child, and the dead. If you snooped around a little, though, you soon found cages with human skulls inside them. Haverton was powerful in its wickedness and did a good job of papering over some of I Am Alive’s more prominent flaws.

Wiliest assassin

Winner: Corvo Attano (Dishonored)
Runner-up: Mark (Mark of the Ninja)

It’s been a bumper year for wily bastards in video games, such as Far Cry 3′s Jason Something, Dishonored’s Corvo Attano, and Mark from, err, Mark of the Ninja — not to mention characters from the likes of Lone Survivor and Hotline Miami.

But it’s Dishonored’s disgraced bodyguard and murderer extraordinaire Corvo who scoops the award for King of the Wilies (mind the lone “l” there). Corvo’s knack for teleporting gave him the upper hand over his peers, but even without that advantage, his deep well of tricks and murdering abilities (conjuring rats and slowing time to a standstill were two of the best) meant Corvo was well out in front of the pack. He was presumably loitering in the shadows somewhere like a steampunk Gary Glitter.

Best ego massage

Winner: Dishonored

(SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER)

(YOU HAVE BEEN SPOILER-WARNED)

Games are mostly about empowerment. In Dishonored, Corvo’s cache of party tricks did a sensational job of conferring on the player a gross sense of power. But it was a moment of silence — a transient scene at the end of a level that featured almost no killing — that triggered that feeling better than any other.

(LAST WARNING)

It came after Corvo had weaseled his way into a fancy dress party disguised as himself (in what was basically the best Hitman level all year). Having hidden in plain sight and satisfied the mission objectives, Corvo left the party, but not before scrawling his name in the guest book.

It was a sensational “screw you” to all the guards who had made your getting there awkward. Your wits, not your trigger finger, had got the better of Dunwall’s finest. A real moment of class.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Indie games are more than inexpensive alternatives to this year’s Assassin’s Creed and Halo; they’re mouthpieces for serious issues, bold experiments in game design, and canvases for discovering new artistic possibilities.

We sorted through 2012′s releases and chose the 15 strongest and most influential titles, in no particular order. Feel free to let us know which ones we missed in the comments. Or tell us we’re completely nuts. Whatever makes you as happy as these games made us.

Fez

Developer: Polytron Corporation
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Release Date: April 13, 2012

We might as well get the elephant out of the room first: Fez is a smart and challenging puzzle-platformer with bad associations. Creator Phil Fish lashed out against gamers and Japanese developers in the spring, and he won few people over with his personality. Luckily, Fez’s charming style and engaging gameplay are as memorable as his antics, only better.

Fez puts a tiny, two-dimensional hero named Gomez in a world that you can rotate and explore three-dimensionally. The complexity of the space Gomez inhabits is what leads to the game’s many brainteasers, but the peaceful visuals and soundtrack encourage impatient players to slow down and reflect.

Although widely praised, Fez is the center of a big controversy — and host to criticism — because of the game’s glitches and the perhaps inadequate steps that Polytron and Microsoft took to fix them. Should we hold developers and publishers responsible when they fail to issue patches that improve the experience for everyone? Do we have the right to boast that Western games and development are superior to that of another country, especially one that’s contributed so much to the medium? Polytron delivered one of the best indie games of the year, but it also gave the industry something much more valuable: an attitude adjustment. Whether that’s made us better or worse is hard to say. The Japanese, at least, have made the most of the criticism — warranted or not.

Spelunky

Developer: Mossmouth
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Release Date: July 4, 2012

Before you yell that Spelunky is from 2009, take a look at the screenshot above. Or better yet, fire up your Xbox 360 and behold the differences. Spelunky on Xbox Live Arcade is a completely new model, not only graphically improved compared to its PC counterpart but also with more content. The action-platformer now has 1-to-4 player co-op and deathmatch, new music and zones, and additional enemies and traps.

The appeal remains the same: Explore and survive. Sometimes making it to the next area requires a careful balance of risk and reward, such as a decision to attack the shopkeeper and incite violence or leave the princess safely behind, for example. Sometimes it comes down to plain luck. And part of it depends on whether your friends are reliable or whether they’re all too happy to let you suffer.

Spelunky’s recipe is one of the most irresistible in game design. The promise of randomized adventure and secrets keeps players from setting down their controllers even though they’ve died countless times (and will many more). It’s a game that you’ll love to hate and an excellent case study of how to serve both PC and console crowds without losing what makes the experience exciting and original.

The Walking Dead: Episodes 1-5

Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS
Release Dates: April 24, 2012 through November 21, 2012

With how big Robert Kirkman’s zombie series The Walking Dead has become — leaping from comics, where it all started, to television and now video games — it’s easy to forget that so much of its success is in the hands of independent creators and developers.

Telltale Games has stirred the emotions of players for nearly a year, fascinating them with a surprisingly well-handled story and, better yet, bringing attention back to the point-and-click adventure genre. All five episodes have set a new standard for interactive storytelling. And the game could give the TV show a few pointers about how to create compelling character performances.

The Walking Dead is also a huge success for a relatively small independent company with a modest portfolio of games, including Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit. Not all of them have been winners, like Jurassic Park: The Game. But this breakaway hit foretells good tidings for Telltale in the new year.

Retro/Grade

Developer: 24 Caret Games
Publisher: 24 Caret Games
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: August 21, 2012

You could learn a lot from your mistakes if only you could rewind time.

That’s the challenge of rhythm-space game Retro/Grade, where you control a spaceship pilot bobbing his head to the music as you play events in reverse. You’ll need to pay attention to the beat as much as the colorful lasers streaking across your screen, which you “collect” so that when the action moves in real time again, you can dominate the battle. Each burst of energy within these lanes of light is your own ship fire, so when you suck up one of these, you’re also shooting it against the enemy in the present flow of time. You can also fast-forward using your rocket’s fuel to give yourself extra seconds to fix your mistakes.

It’s a clever side-scroller and twist on the shooter and music genres, and equally as engaging is Skyler McGlothlin’s (electronica music artist Nautilis) soundtrack and the zero-gravity, free-flying motions of the course you chart. Just keep an eye on the background as you spin and rotate your way through the awesome regions of space. It’s pretty cool.

The Unfinished Swan

Developer: Giant Sparrow
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: October 23, 2012

The Unfinished Swan is an abstract tale of loss and our need for closure. You play as Monroe, an orphan boy whose mother dies and leaves him one of her paintings, an illustration of a swan. When the bird escapes its picture, Monroe follows its orange footsteps through a world that you create one glob of paint at a time.

It’s a perpetual visual wonder, but as you progress, the game evolves and redefines the way you interact with it. What begins as paint becomes water, and so on. Discovering the unknown is the source of real magic here, not merely the acts themselves, and the things you find inspire your imagination as though you had stepped into a fairytale.

The Unfinished Swan’s fragmented images and themes might feel incomplete to some — almost like you’re touring Monroe’s mother’s unfinished paintings come to life. But as a whole, it’s one of the most original and artistic games of the year.

Click through for our next five picks.

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If 2012 has shown us one thing, it’s that video game development is truly in the “crossover era.” GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead, was first available as a downloadable title, not a retail release. Other downloadables, such as indie-developed darlings Journey and Faster Than Light, garnered plenty of votes as well. And in our staff’s and contributor’s top games of the year lists, we even see mobile releases — like Fieldrunners 2.

Gaming has changed, and it’s nice to see that it’s more than just big-budget console and PC titles that have earned Game of the Year attention. Here are the top games as chosen by GamesBeat staffers and contributors. Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments — especially if you feel we’ve left something off our lists!

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis Games

Little green men — yesteryear’s poster boys for mysterious invaders from outer space — are about as menacing as Oompa Loompas armed with toy guns. XCOM’s little gray men, however, are scary as hell. It’s not the ashen skin, bulbous eyes, or creepy-crawly walk. It’s what these Sectoids represent: a greater threat that we are simply not equipped to handle.

In the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we mere humans bring dull knives to plasma gunfights. And just when we start to catch up in weapon technology, the bug-eyed bastards bring bigger guns and meaner friends. These jerks even cheat with mysterious mind-control powers. Meanwhile, we’re barely keeping the checkbook balanced between research, manufacturing, facility construction, aircraft, and an ever-decreasing budget due to world nations pulling out of the program if you can’t keep them safe (and you can never keep them all safe).

It all adds up to an incredibly exciting and stressful experience. Each decision — whether it’s which tree to hide your assault trooper behind or which whiny country gets your last airspace-monitoring satellite — feels monumental and permanent. Humanity’s existence is at stake, and we just want to make it to the next month, when a few more pennies come rolling in and a few more traumatized soldiers get out of sick bay.

It’s a desperate fight. And boy will we celebrate when those little gray men are dead.

Shoe’s other picks for best games of 2012: Fieldrunners 2, Dishonored, Journey, Fez

Lead writer Dean Takahasi

The Unfinished Swan
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Giant Sparrow

The Unfinished Swan is one of the most creative titles yet for the PlayStation Network. It’s an interactive fairy tale where you lob blobs of black paint at a white screen. As you do so, you uncover part of a 3D space hidden within the white scene. Uncovering each scene is a mind-bending task, as you have to navigate perplexing puzzles. You explore the unknown, and as you do so, you uncover a new segment in a fairy tale about a boy who loses his mother. It is a touching story that will remind of you of the zany Alice in Wonderland. Ian Dallas, the game creator, feels that a child who is abandoned is like an unfinished work of art. But just when you think that the game has become predictable, it changes. In some ways, the story seems unfinished. But the title is a wonderful first effort for Giant Sparrow, a new studio bankrolled by Sony.

Dean’s other picks for the best games of 2012: Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Journey, Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Culture editor Sebastian Haley

Hotline Miami
Platform: PC
Publisher: Developer Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games

Indie sensation Hotline Miami is best described as the film Drive, but in a retro, pixelated and somehow even more violent form, with subtle hints of Rockstar’s Manhunt sprinkled on top. The short-but-sickeningly sweet levels allow you to carefully orchestrate your symphony of murder and mayhem, filling the floors with maimed corpses and spraying the walls with crimson, all while its surreal, Miami Vice-inspired soundtrack beats in the back of your mind. Basically, if you own a Wii or like looking at livestreams of kittens, this is not your kind of game.

Sebastian’s other picks for best games of 2012: Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3, The Darkness II, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Staff writer Jeff Grubb

Mark of the Ninja
Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade), PC
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Klei Entertainment

For these Game of the Year summaries, we’re supposed to look above and beyond the individual parts of a game. We’re supposed to write about why it is important, but in the case of Mark of the Ninja, it’s those parts that make it so special. Developer Klei’s 2D stealth action game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC is a master class in well-executed gameplay mechanics. Whether it’s a soundwave that ripples off your ninja’s feet to indicate how much noise he’s making or a vision cone that indicates where an enemy is looking, Mark of the Ninja is constantly communicating with the player. It then provides the player with a great controlling character to poke and prod the world with.

It’s not rare that a game makes you feel like a badass, but with Klei’s game it’s not about how powerful you are — it’s about how in tune with the environment your character is. You have so much visual and aural information that every moment is an opportunity for experimentation. You can spend 10 minutes laying out a detailed plan that involves deadly traps, or you can play the entire game without a sword.

In video games, we don’t usually get a lot of new ideas, we just get different takes on old ideas. Stealth is an old idea at this point, but Mark of the Ninja distinguishes itself by executing the concept better than any other game before it.

Jeff’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, FTL: Faster Than Light

Copy editor Jason Wilson

FTL: Faster Than Light
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Subset Games
Developer: Subset Games

I’m low on fuel. My crew raced around my starship like a colony of ants, hastily putting out fires as doors opened to the cold vacuum of space. The Rebels are closing in on me. Do I take a chance and see if I can gain more fuel in the next nebular cloud, or do I make a mad dash for the next sector and hope to find friendly forces instead of angry adversaries? These are just some of the choices the player faces in FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie roguelike that’s swept upon a number of Game of the Year lists in 2012 (including ours!). What makes FTL so compelling to players is that a take on Civilization’s “one more turn” addictive nature — but instead of furthering your game, you’re driven to see if your next attempt takes you closer to escaping the pursuing Rebel forces. And it’s this that makes FTL one of the most interesting, fascinating, and, yes, best games of 2012.

Jason’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Crusader Kings II, Torchlight II, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Far Cry 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Something visceral. Something primal. Most shooters don’t have these. They settle you into a safe, comfortable role. Veteran soldier. Seasoned cop. Career criminal. A hero … or an antihero. But Far Cry 3 makes you run blind through the jungle while murderous pirates hunt you like a piece of prey. You’re just a terrified kid. Never held a gun before. Never seen anyone die before. Now you’re covered in your own brother’s blood and getting high off the giddy thrill of mere survival. Then you’re turned lose to roam two amazingly rich, open-world islands where you can really start enjoying yourself, slowly and cautiously picking your tormentors apart. Before you know it, the elation you get from destroying a criminal empire hardens into a different kind of drug: revenge.

That’s when Far Cry 3 surpasses the standard shooter fare. An aimless twentysomething becomes a killer of killers, as feared as the insane warlords he wants dead. Between coolly tense stealth play and straight-up gunfights, you become the predator, stalking intruders in your jungle and murdering them at will. It all culminates in a moment where you must decide just how much you enjoy that particular power fantasy. Enough to abandon your humanity? Maybe.

Far Cry 3 goes there. Solid gameplay — minus a weak-tea multiplayer — and incredibly detailed environments lift it far enough, but its secret weapon lies in how it takes you into that dark, primal place. And then it dares you to ignore your basic animal instincts.

Rus’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Fez, Halo 4, Journey

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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[Writer's Note: I held off on posting this for a couple of weeks because of the recent tragedy in Connecticut. However, I've decided to go ahead and publish it after reading Leigh Alexander's post on violence in games and Ben Kuchera's insightful Tweet, "I'm always uncomfortable with the way we give every bully a platform while denying games are powerful when we're under attack. ... We argue games are a powerful art form that contain important messages, and then we're in the spotlight claiming they're pure entertainment." So instead of keeping this buried  somewhere out of fear that it will be criticized for being exploitative or poorly timed, I'm simply going to go ahead and present as intended: as a rumination on my uncomfortable relationship with virtual violence.]

I was 9-years-old when I beat a man to death for the first time. I did it with a red crowbar. I was standing on a craggy cliffside; my victim, a nameless solider wearing a gas mask, lay prostate, his head awkwardly sticking out over the edge like a diving board. I hadn’t meant to dispatch him in such a brutal manner. I had simply run out of ammo moments before and been left with no alternative but to cave in his skull.

I stood still for a couple of moments, my hazard suit shrieking that I should seek medical attention immediately. Instead of progressing toward the level’s end, I knelt down and smacked the body with the crowbar. Thuck! I giggled and slapped the body again and again, and pop! The soldier exploded, showering the arid desert below with intestines, limbs, and a goofy-looking half-skull whose one remaining eye stared at me as it plummeted into the sandy abyss.

I watched in awe and then reloaded my quicksave so I could do it all over again.

*

Four years later in Liberty City, I sat behind the wheel of a Blista Compact. Out of the alleyway emerged the guy I was supposed to kill. He was surrounded by his entourage of armed thugs, so instead of rushing the group with guns blazing, I decided to take the tactical route: I ran them down with my car. I managed to kill the target and two of his bodyguards. Then, I quickly turned the car around and took care of the stragglers.

I briefly wondered why I went back for the men who posed no threat to me. I reassured myself that they were enemies and that I was supposed to kill them — a weak excuse that satisfied my younger self, but even so, that same excuse doesn’t float for the thousands of pedestrians I have shot, stabbed, kicked, and blown to pieces throughout the Grand Theft Auto series. These are people I’ve tormented just because they’ve populated the world.

I tell myself that I’m not a violent person, and real-world examples seem to suggest that I’m not. I’ve only ever been in a handful of scraps, and the most harm I have ever done to another person was when I accidentally busted someone’s lip with my elbow. Yet there’s something about enjoying this kind of wanton artificial violence and mutilation that has me grappling with these presumptions.

But it’s just a game. That’s always the defense. These people are not real. They do not draw breath; the men I massacred were simply lines of code. No harm done, right?

*

Every once in a while, I’ll reinstall Hitman: Blood Money in order to replay a single level: “A New Day,” which has Agent 47 infiltrating a suburban neighborhood in order to kill a well-guarded FBI informant. I’ve completed the mission at least three dozen times now. I know the simplest way to kill the man without raising any suspicions or hurting anyone besides the target. I also know all the corners and hedges to hide behind and can predict what the enemy A.I. will do if I draw them into a firefight. This is often the route I go simply because it’s more fun.

It doesn’t end there, though. After I’ve slaughtered every agent, I move on to eliminating all the other people in the area, including unarmed civilians. They’re witnesses, I tell myself — which is actually somewhat relevant to the gameplay in Blood Money since witnesses cause Agent 47’s notoriety rating to rise and make future missions more difficult to complete. However, even with the practicality issue taken into the account, there is still the knowledge that I consistently choose the path that will end in bloodshed even though I’m well aware of the other, less deadly paths to my objective.

Am I just bloodthirsty? Do other gamers also have ridiculous amounts of fun gunning down virtual people and then feel guilty about it later? And I don’t mean the kind of comedic acknowledgement where one chuckles and quips, “Yeah … I’m a bad person,” with a smirk. I’m talking occasional waves of sincere guilt — not necessarily thoughts that keep me awake at night but moments where I stop and think, “What the hell is wrong with me?” Of course, they’re instantaneously swept out of my brain as soon as the next level of fun-filled carnage finishes loading.

*

Part of me knew that games like Hotline Miami and Spec Ops: The Line were on the way — games that pull a Peckinpah and make the player’s enthusiasm for violence a thematic focus. We’d already seen this prototype in the Metal Gear Solid series, which has consistently presented ham-fisted commentary about violence and war in order make the player mull over these topics, often with mixed results. The example that immediately springs to mind occurs near the end of Snake Eater, when Snake is forced to traverse a river strewn with the ghosts of soldiers the player has killed throughout the game. What sounds like a great idea turned out to be a tedious minigame that frustrated me more than it encouraged me to think about the violence I had committed. (“You give me all these weapons and hapless guards, and you don’t expect me to kill them? Asshole!” was my adolescent line of reasoning.)

Hotline Miami (pictured at top) bothered me in a big way. There is technically a plot in the game — a sorta-kinda reason for why you’re butchering a seemingly endless line of faceless henchman. But the narrative just feels tacked on and flimsy. The game’s multiple hallucination scenes suggest that there is something much bigger going on — some joke the developers are having at the player’s expense: “All we have to do is give you a context and you’ll kill anyone and anything left and right, won’t you?”

Why, yes. Yes, I will. Does that make me a potential monster? Hotline doesn’t ever answer. It’s content to simply smile from the dark. This isn’t a huge departure from the twist in BioShock, but this one affected me on a personal level, poking and prodding my concerns about my love-hate relationship with virtual violence. Logically, none of that makes sense. This is a game. It has no ill intentions, nor does it have the will to dog its players and make them feel disgust. The fact the Hotline affects me in this way says more about me that it does about the game, but the same holds true for novels and film. This doesn’t make one’s experience with the game (or the gamer’s self-realizations) any less valid.

Hotline was a cakewalk emotionally in comparison to Spec Ops: The Line. Instead of teasing me with playful ambiguity and pixelated bloodshed, Spec Ops is much more aggressive in its assault, taking every available opportunity to rub my face in the gory mess that I’ve made throughout the game’s Heart of Darkness-inspired journey. There’s an early segment where the player wanders through a hallway filled with rotting bodies. In his book-length critical reading of game, Brendan Keogh briefly considers the possibility that this hallway is a “metaphorical hell” for the player, the pile of bodies representing all the people that he or she has killed through the game so far. I had a similar interpretation during my first playthrough except that the bodies were not merely representative of this game’s victims but those from my entire time as a gamer: from one end of the room to the other, the bodies of all those dead pedestrians, the FBI informant, and perhaps even of the skeletal remains of that solider from the cliffside. Again, utter logical nonsense. (For one thing, there aren’t enough bodies accounted for.) But Spec Ops spends so much time psychologically assaulting the player and critiquing violence as a form of entertainment that I find myself unable to dismiss the interpretation regardless of how much it’s fueled by my own anxieties about the whole business.

A couple of days ago, games journalist Ian Miles Cheong tweeted, “I don’t think it’s some kind of double standard to be OK with video game violence against not-real-people, and not be OK with real violence.” I share the sentiment, but I still find myself unnerved by just how much I enjoy killing people who aren’t real. (Frankly, I’d be kind of embarrassed to let you in on how much time I spent using spring razors to dismember the guards in Dishonored just to carry their limbs around as distraction devices … or to treat their decapitated heads like soccer balls.) I am not in any way trying to state that Spec Ops or Hotline Miami work as a gauge or predictor for someone’s capacity for violence. Instead, this is more about how both these games hold a mirror up to the player. In my case, I don’t like how they reveal just how much I fucking love violence.

Is it true that I’m more likely to have a favorable opinion of a game if it has gore or an amusing ragdoll system? Yes. Do I absolutely despise a developer’s decision to feature gunplay in a game but not bloody, ragged bullet holes? You bet. And am I ashamed of all of this? A little, but I’m more unnerved than anything else. As someone who characterizes himself as a pacifist, the cognitive dissonance created by this clashing of my real-world ideals and my love for simulated bloodshed is disconcerting.

Ultimately, this anxiety probably won’t change my gaming habits. The majority of games I play are violent in one fashion or another. Tonight, I’ll be gutting pirates all across the Rook Islands with my trusty knife. Tomorrow, I’ll continue trudging through the metro tunnels of post-apocalyptic Moscow, gunning down bandits. Perhaps I’ll even fit in some time to backstab guards in Mark of the Ninja. And on and on it’ll go.

More bodies for the pile.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Don’t worry, guys — impossible amounts of 8-bit blood will return in Hotline Miami 2.

Developer Jonatan “Cactus” Söderström, the creator of the stylish puzzle-murder-puzzle game Hotline Miami, confirmed on his Twitter this morning that he and his team at Dennaton Games have already begun preliminary work on a sequel.

Working while listening to the sweet tunes of a preliminary Hotline Miami 2 soundtrack that we’ve put together during the weekend.

— Jonatan Söderström (@cactusquid) November 26, 2012

That doesn’t mean that Söderström is abandoning Hotline Miami.

“Just want to make it clear that we’re still working on fixing Hotline Miami. We haven’t actually started working on anything new yet,” Söderström wrote on Twitter. ”We only have some general plans for the next game.”

So a next game is coming, but he’s going to squash some bugs in the first one before he does anything else. That makes sense since Hotline Miami only just went on sale on October 23. That’s barely more than a month.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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