Metacritic's Best Videogames of 2012

A far cry from 2011's heights.

It's a good thing that 2013 looks likely to be loaded with great games, because, as metacritic looks over this year's numbers, it seems 2012 wasn't. Not even the late arrival of a great new installment in Ubisoft's Far Cry series could make up for the fact that the past 12 months paled in comparison to recent years, at least at the high end of the scale.

Just 14 console games—and 18 products overall, including PC and handheld (non-iOS) titles—scored 90 or higher in 2012. Those figures represent a huge drop from the previous year, when 23 console titles (and 32 games overall) met or exceeded the 90 mark. In fact, since metacritic started publishing these year-end reports in 2009, metacritic has never encountered such a low total number of great games in a single year.

[kevnb]

meh

[SilentNegotiator]

2012 was iffy all around.

[Cam977]

Black Ops Declassified.

[RuperttheBear]

......was one of the worst games of 2012.

[guitarded77]

Good job linking it to the last page in the article...

I cannot take Metacritic's scores seriously because they take some heavily biased scores into account. All that said, it's not as far off base as some other site's picks for best of 2012.

[Hicken]

If they had some reliable standards, it might be a different story, but... and according to their FAQ, they have no intention of divulging the information surrounding that, either.

As long as someone like Tom Chick is included in their reviewing pool, I'll never be able to take them seriously. One look at his "reviews," and it should be evident that he doesn't have the FIRST clue what he's doing. And it's so blatant that it's pathetic.

[SilentNegotiator]

Poster has "panda" in name.
Posts to the PC page, which has the "best" year because consoles had a slow one.

Yeah, I'm surrrrre it was an accident. /s

[Pandamobile]

What does his name have to do with anything?

[SilentNegotiator]

-_-

You tell me, PANDAmobile. Maybe perhaps it's because there are multiple PC elitists that put a certain mammal into their user names?

[pandatomsk]

my bad. total accident. didn't mean for that to happen. no conspiracy here, just goofed :P

[landog]

from article;

"A total of 114 computer games received positive reviews from critics last year, the highest figure for any gaming platform in 2012, an an increase by 13 compared to the total of green-scoring PC games released in 2011."

go pc!!!

and with the steam holiday sales you can grab so many amazing games for next to nothing...the last 5 years have been amazing for pc gamers, and really, gamers all around, my ps3 and 360 have brought me much joy, though i will say i am darn ready for new consoles...going from pc back to playing a console game is not easy on the eyes.

[davethedog]

I completely agree that going back to console hurts the eyes. My PS3 is nothing but a Netflix streamer now.

However, I still fail to see why everyone likes Steam so much. I hate having to wait for it to update when it does and it sucks how it has to run in the background. They do have some good deals on occasion but I much prefer to just load up a game and play.

[born2live]

I don't know if it's because 2012 was a bad year for games, or if it's because the critics are getting more demanding...

[TekoIie]

This year definitely goes to the PC but still great for everyone all round :)

[xursz]

Persona 4 Golden.

[black911]

Walking Dead = Heavy Rain Rip Off

Beyond Two Souls looks Amazing!!!!

[violents]

heavy rain had nothing to do with zombies, you understand that right? Because if your talking about the gameplay style you could apply that to nearly any game. Every shooter is just a COD rip off or Uncharted is just a Tomb raider rip off etc etc.

Then you praise beyond two souls when that looks like it will be just like heavy rain with a different story underneath the exact same type of gameplay.

You need to stay consistant dude, either its cool or its not. How can you expect anyone to respect your opinions when you cant even stick to you own guns?

[TryMe]

Ignorant commment. At least the walking dead knows how to develop GREAT characters that you actually give 2 fucks about, and at least has a great fucking narrative with great writing.

Unlike that piece of shit called heavy rain.

[Eamon]

Point and Click story games existing long before Heavy Rain.