Game of the Year 2012: AGTurbo

2012 was an amazing year, of surprising games. No game surprised and amazed me like Max Payne 3: my Game of the Year.

When I first saw the trailers of Max Payne 3 I was disappointed that it took place in Sao Paulo, he was bald, and the trailers consisted nothing but shooting, that there was a cover system, and was a complete affront of the series. Further I progressed in Max Payne 3 the more I enjoyed it. I have beat the single player 4 times, beat the game on New York Minute, and legend twice on multiplayer. With no doubt I give Max Payne 3 my GAME OF THE YEAR.



While no longer in Remedy’s hands, Rockstar Games lived up to the series legacy. The level of detail for the environments were astonishing. The Favela levels in Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t come close to the level of detail in Max Payne 3. Enemies would bleed out differently depending on the fabric of their clothes and the surface of the floor.  All the guns in the game felt lethal. Shooting an enemy in the head regardless of difficulty was instant death.

The game didn’t fuck around. I would die a lot my first playthrough on normal, due to how fast paced the combat was. Bullettime wasn’t a gimmick, it was essential. The voice acting and storytelling in Max Payne 3 was also solid. The slow mo set pieces were well used. Also the bullet kill cam was a nice feature when clearing the last guy in a room.

I wasn’t expecting much for the multiplayer, but I spent more time playing Max Payne 3 online more than any other game of 2012. The bullet time worked, and armed with the right perks I could do a lot of damage. Max Payne 3 is the only multiplayer game I’ve played on consoles were my Kill/Death ratio is greater than 1.


Runner Up: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

There is very few games that play like XCOM. FirAxis did an amazing job with turn based combat mixed with base resource management.


3rd Place: Sleeping Dogs

Best open world game I’ve played this year. The use of martial arts in an open world game set in Hong Kong were well used. The driving, and fighting mechanics were implemented well. The soundtrack with cantonese music helped added to the Asian atmosphere, and the main characters never went into ching chong ching chong territory.

AGTurbo needs pills. Follow him on Twitter.