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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What do I like most about video games? They always strive to do more, to be better.

Games we judged as the best of the best a few years ago might seem dated now. Some feature such tight, timeless designs that they do hold up over the long term, but these fall into a very small category. Otherwise, and in every way, this is the industry status quo: Nearly every game competes not only to outdo past iterations but to also completely dwarf every other title on the market. They don’t always succeed. But one way or another, gamers always benefit from the effort.

The industry moves forward, always forward. So we look back to applaud the new directions it took in 2012 and how they might influence what comes next.

Integrating the GamePad

Most Wii U launch titles relegate the GamePad’s spectacular functionality to stolid maps or inventory screens. Ubisoft’s ZombiU does that, too, but in ways that feed directly into — and significantly enhance — its gameplay. Your best tool to survive the undead hordes is the “Prepper Pad” — in fact, the GamePad itself re-created in the game. It scans and tags items, enemies, and exits, but narrowing your attention to the pad’s small screen leaves you vulnerable to attack and permanent character death. Picking through your items makes you feel completely exposed. When a survival-horror game makes inventory management into a completely nerve-wracking experience, you know it’s smarter than the average bear.

Honestly, I haven’t seen game controls so deeply symbiotic with their game since Dance Dance Revolution. ZombiU simply couldn’t exist on a different system, and it’s a beacon to other developers on how to take full advantage of Nintendo’s new hardware.

Silent storytelling

Minimalism isn’t exactly a new thing in games — see N+ and Limbo for details — but minimalism with depth of design and storytelling threads a fine needle with mountaineering rope. Journey, from Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany, did just that, building an epic story without any words, written or spoken. It didn’t need any, either. A deft combination of imagery, music, and interaction made us feel the joy of discovery, the struggle against adversity, the elation of flight. Journey created great complexity out of relative simplicity.

Not everybody stripped down that far, but more than a few games this year dialed back the interactivity to dial up a player’s personal interaction. “Don’t look or it takes you” set the tone for Slender in just six terrifying words. Antichamber’s tests only said enough to make you question every reflex you’ve learned as a gamer. Dear Esther gave you an island and a mystery, but nothing to jump over, no puzzles to solve, or even any items to touch. Like Journey, those approaches all left the explanations open to interpretation … effectively turning the stories themselves into interactive features. Those journeys became our journeys, full of sweeping emotions and buoyed by the indomitable urge to press onward.

Deconstructing our heroes

Sure, games offer a huge slice of power fantasy with a side of personal awesomeness, but I can’t remember ever playing so many out-of-their-depth characters as I did this year. We’ve never been more fragile. We played as children in Unfinished Swan and Papo y Yo. Postapocalyptic survivors in games like I Am Alive, ZombiU, and The Walking Dead always felt like they were mere inches away from disaster. A world of death quickly unraveled protagonists in Far Cry 3 and Spec Ops: The Line.

But that’s nothing compared to what we did to a lot of our old friends. Commander Shepard suffered from survivor’s guilt all through Mass Effect 3. Max Payne’s self-loathing never ran out of downward spirals to charge through (in slo-mo, of course) until he finally reached for the light again. Even the implacable, emotionless masks of Hitman’s Agent 47 and Halo 4′s Master Chief took serious hits as each found something deeply personal to fight for … fights that frequently came with devastating turns. When the Master Chief suddenly refuses a direct order, it’s time to re-evaluate everything he is.

Gamers have become an older, more sophisticated audience. The industry’s responded by adding vulnerability and depth to the people we play as, making us more sympathetic to their goals and more invested in their safety. And with games like The Last of Us and the Tomb Raider reboot scheduled to pound us mercilessly in 2013, you can expect this trend to extend well into the future.

Adventure games are still relevant

I was done with point-and-click adventure games back in the ’90s. I’m back on them now. The team at Telltale Games didn’t just keep the flame alive with The Walking Dead, their superlative five-part series based on Robert Kirkland’s graphic novel (and its television counterpart) … they brought modern game designs into what many considered an outdated genre.

And they did it with an elegantly simple device: the quick-time event. Turns out the same gameplay cliché that annoys me in God of War (and its many clones) instantly turns the usually static point-and-click exercise into a tense, action-packed struggle for survival. It’s panic-inducing to suddenly find yourself zeroing a shaky cursor on a shambling zombie before it takes a chunk out of protagonist Lee or, even more upsetting, to rescue darling Clementine, his young charge, from a grisly fate. That lends real danger to the rest of the story — survival feels tenuous indeed — and the split-second decisions you must make become even more agonizing.

I actually had to step away from The Walking Dead for a while after its devastating third episode. No other game this year did that to me. That little tick-tick-tick countdown behind every choice made Telltale’s simple point-and-click drama as intense … no, more intense … than any high-octane shooter or jump-scare horror game. More, please.

Games are growing up (maybe)

Two years ago, a trailer showing callous killer Agent 47 eliminating a squad of PVC-clad gun nuns wouldn’t have raised much more than a few eyebrows. Hey, we’re the medium where all the ladies in Dead or Alive get a dedicated physics engine for the boob-jiggle. It’s just a game, after all, so who cares?

Except that’s an argument you can make when you’re 12. The average age in the gaming community hovers in the mid-30s.

2012 saw a heightened awareness of and direct confrontation against the sexism that’s long been a part of this industry’s DNA, both in and out of the games themselves. Halo 4′s multiplayer shipped with a zero-tolerance policy toward racist or sexist language — fittingly announced by executive producer Kiki Wolfkill and Microsoft executive Bonnie Ross — and lifetime Xbox Live bans for violators. Gearbox Software tried to include a special character class in Borderlands 2 for less-experienced players before lead designer John Hemmingway self-sabotaged by calling it “girlfriend mode.” Despite that gaffe, it still presented a serious attempt at inclusiveness … which is the opposite of sexism.

We’ve got a long way to go, baby. But at last it seems like we’re moving in the right direction.

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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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Ubisoft is unveiling a bunch of titles tied to its digital game publishing strategy today. The French game publisher is announcing something for every platform and business model. The games include enhancements to Ghost Recon Online, new Xbox Live downloadable titles, free-to-play browser games, mobile titles, and more Facebook fare. The games are based on both its “companion game” strategy of stretching a single game property across multiple platforms as well as its focus on publishing games on the appropriate digital platforms.

Chris Early, the vice president of digital publishing at Ubisoft, recently presided over the company’s third Ubisoft digital day event. We caught up with him there for a one-on-one interview. Here is a transcript of our interview with Early.

GamesBeat: Do you see this as your second generation of digital games?

Chris Early: Well, it’s our third digital day here. Somebody earlier asked me what I was most proud of here, and I think what I’m actually most proud of is that for the last two years, we did what we said we were going to do the year before. Now, this year for example, Ghost Recon: Commander is out [on Facebook]. The whole companion gaming strategy is coming together. In Commander, when you play a mission, at the end of the mission you can choose a reward for Ghost Recon: Commander, which helps you play. You normally have to pay for those things. Or you can choose a reward for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and use it there. Sixty-five percent of the people are choosing Future Soldier rewards.

GamesBeat: So they can cash them in and….

Early: Yeah, they can use them in Future Soldier. That’s a lot higher than we expected, the tie rate. And if you then look at the Uplay players, because everything connects through Uplay, 83 percent of the people who are Uplay players in the Facebook game pick Future Soldier as well. That’s far more than we expected. We did a great job of brand extension in that case. Letting people play more.

GamesBeat: This is not the kind of game where your goal is to get those 10 million users, right?

Early: Well, it would be great if we had 10 million. [Laughs] But no. I’m not gonna kick that in the mouth, but….

GamesBeat: There are different goals, though.

Early: Right. They monetize higher than any of our other Facebook games. That’s what we expect from a mid-core game like that. Soon the ties to Ghost Recon Online will be out also, and then that, I think, will be an interesting back and forth. We’ll see. You’ll be able to earn things in Commander and then use them that night in Ghost Recon Online. And that night, you’ll get things you can use the next day at lunchtime in Commander. In both of those cases, these are things that you’d be buying, normally. We extend the interface. I think we’re at the beginning of our, if you want to call it… The second-generation games. A lot of the lessons that we’ve learned over the last year and a half, those games, they’re now appearing in the new games. We learned some things. We saw some things. It took a cycle to design them in. Now they’re starting to appear. That’s rewarding.

GamesBeat: Is this a larger number of games than you guys have shown before?

Early: Yeah, this is the largest number of games, and across the largest number of platforms, too. We talk about three main tenets. We support multiple platforms. We even announced that we’ll have digital content for download at the launch of Wii U, on day one. We support demanding gaming and the brand engagement. Not only through games like Ghost Recon Commander, but also through games like Rayman. You’ve got another platform where you can play Rayman and experience the brand.

GamesBeat: Oh, so your companion games?

Early: Or full-on games. And then the third thing we wanted to talk about was the way players can get to the content. How are we creating that business model and going with a variety of business models? You look out on the floor there: We’ve got premium games; we’ve got free-to-play games; we’ve got paymium games. However you want to call it, all the different “iums.” We have it out there. That third leg of the strategy is “Be present.” Learn about, and expand into each of the business models. That opens up our brands to more players being able to play.

GamesBeat: Ghost Recon Online: How has that been received so far?

Early: It’s been received well. It’s out. We’re just beginning a marketing push now. We launched it quietly, over at Gamescom. That was where we had the announcement. We have a lot of people playing it. They seem to be having fun. I don’t know if you played it or not, but it’s got a surprising amount of content before you have to even think about paying for anything. Which was, I think, one of the gutsy moves that the design team made. They decided that every single thing that you could buy, weapons-wise and gameplay-wise…. If you could buy it for real money, you could also buy it for in-game currency. Every single thing. You can earn the entire game free. My son and I, when we look at it…. I play, I get to the right level where I can buy the new sniper rifle, and I pull out the cash to do it. I don’t have the time. But he has plenty of time. He’s just going to play for another few hours and earn the gun. So from my standpoint, that’s ideal. I don’t want to spend 10 more hours to get that gun. I already got to the right level where I can buy it. Let me just buy it.

GamesBeat: What kind of platform is Call of Juarez on?

Early: That’s XBLA and PSN.

GamesBeat: Some of these are pretty hefty games….

Early: What you’re seeing is…you saw that with I Am Alive. It’s an XBLA, PSN, small-format game with production quality that you’d equate with a retail title. Same thing with Call of Juarez. Same thing with Spartacus. When we showed Spartacus at Comic-Con, we didn’t talk about the business model then. People thought it was a console game, a $60 dollar console game. What we were able to say today is… You probably saw the Microsoft talk about their free-to-play pilot program. There’s three games in it, and we’re the only third-party publisher. We’re going to be, at the launch of Spartacus, the only publisher that has a free-to-play game on both consoles. On PlayStation and on Xbox. Again, pushing that business model into new territory. Figuring out how the console crowd is going to behave when you give them a console-quality game and a free-to-play business model.

GamesBeat: Your mobile titles are still in the offing here? You’re still awaiting those?

Early: Well, we have a number of them out there. Rayman is a mobile title. Nutty Fluffies, which is the next one from RedLynx, is a kind of roller coaster game. That’s a mobile title. Trials Evolution has done well. There’s a new Trials coming. I would say that we’re not there with all of our major brands yet. There’s a partnership we have with Gree on Assassin’s Creed: Utopia, to develop a game in the Assassin’s Creed world. We’re getting there. We’re getting there a lot quicker than I would have expected, for having just come out of the exclusive relationship with GameLoft.

GamesBeat: When I was talking to Kabam, they had an interesting observation about how iOS games were actually monetizing better for them. They’re making more money on those games than the Facebook games. I wonder if you guys expect that to happen at some point as well.

Early: That would be awesome.

GamesBeat: Because the iOS crowd has a longer history of paying for things. They’ve got their credit cards on file. They’re hardcore gamers. You have a larger percentage of gamers among them. And then Facebook has a shorter history of monetizing, and it has a wider array of folks, many of whom have never played games seriously. Lower numbers on the iOS could actually mean more money for you in the pot.

Early: That’s right. It happens you make a payment mechanism frictionless. It’s the same thing I saw back at Microsoft with Xbox Live Arcade. When it’s easy to press a button and convert from trial to pay, many more people convert. That’s the way it’s set up with Apple already. It’s a lot easier to convert. Both the initial purchase and the ongoing in-app purchases.

GamesBeat: But it doesn’t mean you’re going to join a stampede off of Facebook, though?

Early: No, I don’t. We don’t really go off a lot of platforms, right? Like, we’re still making DS games. The question is, how do we make our efforts, how do we make those games profitable, no matter what platform we’re making them on? That’s the business management question, from the overall perspective. Will our games continue to be on Facebook? Yeah. Will they evolve so that we’re making the money out of the niche that we can on Facebook? Yeah, absolutely. Ghost Recon, like I said, is monetizing better than any of our other games. That’s great.

GamesBeat: Are some of your titles in the future going to be more mobile-first?

Early: I think we’ll see mobile…I don’t know about first, but either simultaneous or not delayed by a significant period. Right now, we’re talking about a few months in between, which is kind of painful.

GamesBeat: Any final thoughts?

Early: Let’s see, anything else to talk about… We announced the partnership with [the IGN Pro League]. They’re going to be using ShootMania in their tournaments. It’s the first time they’ll be using a first-person shooter. We’ve got the new pack in Ghost Recon Online, the Arctic maps. If you look closely, you’ll also see some Razer logos in there.

GamesBeat: An in-game ads?

Early: Well, maybe think of it as a sponsorship. It’s not a massive kind of in-game thing. Although I think there is a TV screen somewhere that’s playing a commercial. That’s more like… I think it’s some programmer’s idea. Spartacus is there. That’s another new free-to-play game. It’s 80 percent fighting and then 20 percent a city-builder. It’s a good mix. It’s getting a great response. We can’t wait for that one to come out.

GamesBeat: Any other lessons that you’ve picked up by the third digital day here?

Early: For the first time, we had products that we wanted to show but we couldn’t. From a space standpoint, we had to make some decisions. That’s good. It means we have more digital content than our floor space allows.

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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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Microsoft’s Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb posted his regular activity roundup for the Xbox 360’s online network, and the Minecraft mania flows strong on the lists.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition nabbed the top position for bestsellers as well as sliding in behind long-standing champions Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops for unique-user counts. Other titans felt the squeeze: Battlefield 3, Halo: Reach, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Gears of War 3 trailed by significant margins.

Here’s the punchline: All of this happened in Minecraft’s first week of release.

Creativity spawns popularity, or so the legions of Minecraft’s stalwart community believes. Originally released for the PC on November 18, 2011, the open-world tinkering title arms players with pick, axe, sword, and other tools while throwing open the floodgates of crowdsourced content, resulting in masterful works such as a recreated Westeros from Game of Thrones and Portal’s test chambers.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition launched on May 9, promptly fashioned a golden sword, and smashed digital-sales records on its first day in the wilds. Its 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20) cost, unusually large for an XBLA title, and its lack of a modding infrastructure didn’t prevent the acclaim rolling in.

Check out Major Nelson’s activity lists below. If you’re playing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, what have you created so far? Let us know in the comments!

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
4. FIFA 12
5. Battlefield 3
6. Halo: Reach
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
8. NBA 2K12
9. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
10. Gears of War 3
11. Grand Theft Auto IV
12. Trials Evolution
13. Forza Motorsport 4
14. Mass Effect 3
15. NHL 12
16. Madden NFL 12
17. Halo 3
18. Red Dead Redemption
19. Saints Row: The Third
20. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

1. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
2. Trials Evolution
3. The Walking Dead
4. Fable Heroes
5. Fez
6. Pinball FX2
7. Awesomenauts
8. I Am Alive
9. Castle Crashers
10. Family Game Night
11. Fruit Ninja Kinect
12. Bloodforge
13. Toy Soldiers: Cold War
14. Gotham City Impostors
15. Toy Soldiers
16. Trials HD
17. Dungeon Defenders
18. Full House Poker
19. Peggle
20. Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012

Top Indie Games (Full Versions purchased)

1. CastleMiner Z
2. CastleMiner
3. Total Miner: Forge
4. The $1 Zombie Game
5. FortressCraft: Chapter 1
6. The Impossible Game
7. Avatar Paintball
8. Avatar Deathmatch
9. Fortress Wars
10. FLIRT
11. End of Days: Infected vs. Mercs
12. Avatar Legends
13. Flight Adventure 2
14. Toy Stunt Bike 2
15. Solar 2
16. Firing Range 2
17. Miner4Ever
18. Avatar Air Wars
19. Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!
20. Attack of the Zombie Horde

Games for Windows Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. Age of Empires Online
3. Batman: Arkham City
4. Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
5. Microsoft Flight
6. Batman: Arkham Asylum
7. DiRT 3
8. Gotham City Impostors
9. F1 2011
10. Resident Evil 5
11. Fallout 3
12. Street Fighter X Tekken
13. Toy Soldiers
14. Fable III
15. BioShock 2
16. Colin McRae: Dirt 2
17. Bulletstorm
18. F1 2010
19. Street Fighter IV
20. Section 8: Prejudice

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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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Below you’ll find a listing of every GamesBeat game review to date. They are listed in reverse chronological order with the latest review appearing at the top. Note that the dates listed are for when the review was posted, not necessarily the actual release date for the game. That information, along with platform tested and more, can be found in the actual review.

2013

5/13

• Metro: Last Light

5/6

• Star Trek

4/24

• Monaco

4/22

• Dead Island Riptide

4/19

• Defiance

4/18

• Cut the Rope: Time Travel

4/13

• Shootmania Storm

3/25

• BioShock: Infinite

3/22

• The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

3/21

• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

3/18

• StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

3/14

• Lego City: Undercover

3/8

• MLB 13 The Show

3/7

• God of War: Ascension

3/6

• Dollar Dash

3/5

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate

3/4

• SimCity

2/26

• Star Wars Pinball

2/25

• Tomb Raider

2/19

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• Crysis 3

2/18

• Serious Sam Double D XXL

2/12

• Aliens: Colonial Marines

2/5

• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
• Dead Space 3

2/4

• Ni No Kuni: The Wrath of the White Witch

1/31

• Omerta: City of Gangsters

1/30

• Skulls of the Shogun
• Fire Emblem: Awakening

01/22

• The Cave

01/18

• Temple Run 2
• Tokyo Crash Mobs

01/15

• Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable

01/10

• Noble Nutlings
• Anarchy Reigns

01/07

• Seduce Me

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Plenty of games offer side missions (like the ones above), but I Am Alive’s may be the most stress-inducing. A simple task is usually anything but. In fact, every other minute of this post-apocalyptic trek was filled with high-heart-rate, nerve-wracking tension. And the strangest part of all of this? I Am Alive is actually fairly slow-paced and even boring at times.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Realism

I Am Alive is 100% raw, gritty survival. You won’t find any zombies or evil corporations here (even if one were behind this mysterious civilization-ending “event,” it’s nothing that the game explores). Lack of basic resources, suffocating dust, and common street thugs are your biggest threats.

As you roam the desolate, hazy streets looking for hints of your missing wife and daughter, you must grab what few supplies you can. A bottle of fresh water, a sealed can of food, a first-aid kit…even a single pistol bullet can mean so much here. Finding any of these is a major victory and worthy of an audible “yes!” during playtime, not only because of their rarity, but because I Am Alive is so damn tough and unforgiving.

Difficulty in that realism

You need these supplies because you will get hurt, and you’ll have no other way to make yourself unhurt. I Am Alive doesn’t coddle you. If an enemy stabs you, you can’t run and hide and wait for your health automatically replenish itself. If your health bar’s down, it will stay down until you use one of your consumables (think classic Resident Evil healing items, only way more rare).

If you start scaling the side of a building or a cliff wall, your stamina will drain — and your max stamina will go soon after that. In other words, if you accidentally overexert yourself, you can seriously damage your body (if you don’t fall to your death), making future physical activities that much more difficult. Again, some consumables can fix that, but if you haven’t gotten the idea already, those aren’t always easy to come by.

This risk-risk (no reward) system is incredibly stressful! As you start to tire during a climb, your character starts slowing down, the music starts increasing its intensity, and you start freaking out. If you can’t find a spot to rest, you either have to quickly burn through what few supplies you have or just…die. It makes the (admittedly more polished) climbing mechanics in an adventure game like Uncharted seem so trivial and arcadey.

Adding to the stress is your limited number of “retries.” You get three of these in between very spaced-apart save points, so dying and reloading is not an option you would want to exercise very often. When you’re down to the last retry, you’ll wonder if you should start taking high-blood-pressure medicine just to finish this adventure. Get through it, however, and you’ll be rewarded with the greatest sense of relief you’ve probably ever felt playing a video game.

Gutsy moral dilemmas

It’s not just you using your own supplies; random survivors might need them, too. Do you give up your only med kit to help out an injured man who’s lying in the streets helpless? In gameplay terms, you get an extra retry as a reward, though these scenarios are more about the strength of your real-life “character.” You won’t get punished for ignoring him. But how will you feel when you walk away and hear him pleading for your help, knowing you’re probably his last hope, and he’ll probably die without your generosity? Can you live with that?

(Very minor spoiler alert…skip ahead to the next section if you’d like.) A most gut-wrenching scene comes later in the game. After I discovered that a gang has taken over one floor of an abandoned hotel to use as their rape headquarters, I head in to rescue one specific victim. In one scene, I overhear one thug about to start his “party” with a bound girl. “Now you’re going to get it from all of us,” he says angrily, as punishment for her spitting at him.

I believe the game gave me a choice here: I can kill the guy with a single shot from my bow, but that would use up my very last piece of ammo at that time (and he was positioned across a gap to where I wouldn’t be able to retrieve my arrow). Or I can look the other way. I say “believe” because I ended up not attempting to save the girl. I just couldn’t risk giving up my last shot in this den of evil.

As I write this, that scene still replays in my head in a most unpleasant way. That’s some powerful writing and acting. And I curse — and commend — the developers for making me feel so bad about some virtual people.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

Long levels

A desolate city leads to desolate action. Even though the hostile climate is itself an enemy, slowly draining you of valuable stamina in the thicker-dust sections, some of the levels are just too lengthy. The game will force you to do some backtracking, which is annoying (but still keeping with the “realistic” vibe), but at the same time (and rather inconsistently), it will also let you skip a lot of retracing your steps, too.

The thick fog, limited visibility, muted colors, and heavy, oppressive music can be a bit much at times, too, especially in the nighttime scenes (which will scare you in that Silent Hill way). This game will make you desperate for any reprieve like clean air and bright sunshine — things that don’t really exist in I Am Alive.

Story

Although the story concludes in an extremely bold, also gutsy manner, the campaign ends up feeling like a giant side quest — one worth seeing through (who could say no to a little girl who’s lost her family?) but a side quest nonetheless.

CONCLUSION

My friends have been asking me how this game is, and I tell them all the same thing: “It’s not fantastic, but you’ve got to experience it.” Not fantastic because, technically speaking, I Am Alive has some clumsy controls (where you can’t always get your character to do exactly what you want him to do), with some long, repetitive bits.

But in a time when most games want to baby us with giant “go here!” waypoints, regenerating health, and an overabundance of save and checkpoints, I Am Alive kicks us in the ass with heart-pounding, intense, and unforgiving gameplay. It takes a lot of chances, and as a result, it’s one that will stick in my memory for a long time to come.

Score: 82/100

I Am Alive was released on March 7, 2012 for the Xbox 360 (with a PS3 version to arrive later in 2012). A download code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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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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The game play of I Am Alive, a title developed by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio, is unconventional. Instead of a plethora of weapons and ammo, you’ll often find that you have very few resources for fighting. It’s a big problem if you run into three mean strangers and you’ve only got one bullet.

But that’s part of the experiment behind this downloadable game for Xbox Live, according to Stan Mettra, creative director on I Am Alive. It’s nice to know that an innovative idea can still find a way into the risk-averse game market.

We saw a hands-on demo of the game at the Consumer Electronics Show. It takes place in a post-disaster world where survival is the entire object. Mettra told us the story is about a man who comes back to his home city after a mysterious disaster known as “The Event” hits the planet. It’s a third-person action adventure focused on survival, but it doesn’t have monsters or zombies.

Instead, you have to deal with human enemies who are unpredictable. You wander the city and stumble across other survivors. Some need help. Some are friendly. And some are confrontational. When you run into the latter type, you might find that they start circling you. If you pull out a gun, they may back off. You might have to bluff if you’re out of bullets. You can force them to step back or retreat entirely. This bluffing and intimidation tactic is something new for a major video game. You have to guess if your enemies are bluffing you, and you have to decide whether to fight or run away. Each encounter is a kind of duel of wits.

You also have to pay attention to your energy, or stamina. If you keep climbing forever, you’ll get tired. If you take medicine, it may not be the right kind. The dust is dangerous enough to kill you, so you have to try to climb above it now and then in order to breathe fresh air. And the dust can obscure areas of the city, so you’ll need a map to get around. In this sense, the game puts you in a hazy gray environment which, even without the human enemies, is dangerous to you.

Sometimes you’ll find things you don’t need, but you can barter them.

The game is going to be released on Xbox Live Arcade. That’s a story in itself. The console disk-based games are a shrinking market where blockbusters rule. A new intellectual property like I Am Alive is a little too risky to release as a major release on retail platforms. The Ubisoft title was originally envisioned as a console title but was rebooted midstream and redirected as a digital release. Since digital games aren’t as expensive to distribute, releasing the game on Xbox Live became a much better option.

Mettra said the game is one of the biggest titles ever to be released via the digital distribution platform of Xbox Live. The game will be available as a Microsoft House Party downloadable title in February.

Check out our interview with Mettra and his colleague Aurelien Palasse.

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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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Well, wonder no more.

While newly announced intellectual properties like Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us and Epic Games’ Fortnite don’t make the list because they currently have no release date information, there are still plenty of promising new IPs set to hit store shelves in 2012. Here are ten brand new titles worth keeping an eye on.

Asura’s Wrath
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: Feb. 21, 2012

Asura was once a revered deity before he was betrayed by his fellow gods, banished from the realm of Shinkoku, and stripped of all his powers. Twelve thousand years later, he is awakened by a mysterious voice and, consumed by vengeance, he sets out on a quest for revenge against his betrayers. Asura’s Wrath, Capcom’s latest beat ‘em up, will be told through episodic gameplay similar to a TV drama series, blending Asian mythology with sci-fi.

Capcom says Asura’s Wrath will deliver a fresh take on the action genre by combining intense combat with a seamless player-controlled narrative. Through a mix of range attacks and close quarter action, Asura will face off against numerous unique enemies, including planetary sized bosses, that Capcom says will continually challenge your expectations.

Dishonored
Developer: Arkane Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: Q2 2012

Dishonored is an all-new first person action game currently under development at Arkane Studios. It’s the studio’s first project since being acquired by ZeniMax, the owner of Bethesda, in 2010. Overseeing the project are co-directors Raphael Colantonio, former lead designer on Arx Fatalis, and Harvey Smith, former lead designer on Deus Ex.

In Dishonored, you take on the role of Corvo, a legendary bodyguard falsely imprisoned for the murder of the Empress, in an industrialized retro-future game world designed by Half-Life 2 Art Director Viktor Antonov. Using a mix of assassination and stealth, you will have to unravel the conspiracy behind the murder and hunt down those responsible. You will have numerous powers and tools to accomplish your tasks, and Arkane says each encounter will play out based on hundreds of different factors.

I Am Alive
Developer: Darkworks (2008-2010), Ubisoft Shanghai (2010-2011)
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: PlayStation 3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Release Date: Q1 2012

Publisher Ubisoft says I Am Alive is an action/adventure game engineered to create a convincing post-disaster world in which players are faced with thought-provoking choices. The game follows a man’s journey to find his wife and daughter in his hometown, Haventon, one year after a cataclysmic “Event” wipes out most of the human race. The mystery of the Event is an important part of the experience, the publisher says, and you will have to figure it out for yourself based on what you see and what others tell you.

Stamina and resource management will be key to surviving I Am Alive’s post-apocalyptic world. There are no supernatural threats. Instead, you will have to brave deadly dust clouds and scale enormous buildings to search for supplies while using a unique combat system that requires you to utilize intimidation against your foes.

Journey
Developer: thatgamecompany
Publisher: Sony
Platforms: PlayStation 3 (PSN)
Release Date: Spring 2012

thatgamecompany, the studio behind flOw and Flower, is known for challenging traditional gaming conventions and Journey is their vision of a unique online adventure experience. After awakening in an unknown world, you will walk, glide, and fly through an awe-inspiring, interactive landscape and discover the history of an ancient civilization. The game encourages exploration without violence and seeks to “de-empower” you, making you feel tiny and helpless in a vast world.

Journey’s approach to online gaming sounds similar to that of Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls, in that you will occasionally be able to explore your surroundings with fellow travelers who cross your path. By traveling together, you will be able to re-shape the experience in a way that the developer hopes will be authentic, emotional, and memorable. Here’s our interview with Journey co-creator Jenova Chen.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Developer: 38 Studios, Big Huge Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: Feb. 7, 2012

38 Studios is the creative enterprise of former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling, who also happens to be an avid gamer. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the studio’s first project and it has already generated buzz simply because of the names attached to it. Ken Rolston, former lead designer of classic role-playing games The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is leading the project, while New York Times best-selling fantasy author R.A. Salvatore is creating the lore and game world and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane is in charge of the art direction.

38 Studios says Reckoning will have the open-world exploration, vast narrative, and character customization fans expect from the genre, as well as fast-paced, graphically stimulating action and fluid controls. If God of War and Fable had a baby, it would probably look a lot like Reckoning, and expectations are high for this brand new IP.

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