PixlBit

Our picks for the best on each console in 2012.

Journey - Winner

From touching the first grain of sand to being shot up like a beam of light, Journey begs the player to reminisce about any number of integral moments within its lifespan. Gamers who have yet to experience the hubbub might wonder what the reason for the love of Journey might be. It has almost attained a cult status. Journey was able to win over so many of us due to its lack of convention and simultaneous accessibility.

While most games have cost millions to integrate large set pieces into their plots, Journey forces nothing on the player. At the beginning, the player might not even realize that a goal is in the distance. This game is much more about taking in the wonderful surroundings: floating through the vibrant colors, finding spirits while listening to soothing music and uncovering hints to the hero’s ancestors in a series of hieroglyphs. Every possibility with each waking moment in the game brings the player a little bit closer to weightlessness: maybe the caped crusader rubs onto the player’s personality a little too much, with nothing to emulate except for a few notes of communication.

All of the areas flow into one another perfectly, even though they remain unique in their own stages of the game. It is rare that a game becomes a cohesive whole as well as Journey, so the sum of its parts are much greater than any one by itself. This is a game to be digested as a whole. Easily finished in one sitting, it was much easier for players to experience Journey more than once and reminisce on the places they had once been. The first other player who they met. The first beautiful ruin. The first snow storm. The first time that they lost their cape completely.

Not much else can be said for the best Playstation 3 game of the year, except that it has to be experienced by everyone remotely interested in reaching higher levels of peacefulness. What a fantastic achievement.

Write-up by Patrick  Kijek 

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Runner Up

Final Fantasy XIII-2, like Mass Effect 3, is a multiplatform game, but call us crazy—the game still feels like a PlayStation title. That’s probably because the core series has been at home with Sony consoles since 1997, and old habits die hard. You can attribute that fact—and the fact that there’s a lot of Final Fantasy love at Pixlbit—to why Final Fantasy XIII-2 made runner up for PlayStation 3 game of the year.

To say that Final Fantasy XIII was divisive with fans would be an understatement. Whether the game’s designers were on the same page with what people expect from a Final Fantasy game is debatable, but Square Enix went a long way towards addressing the issues many people had with that 2010 release. Final Fantasy XIII-2 revisits locations from the first game without giving that sense of “been there, seen that” that was prevalent throughout FF X-2. The time travel element works well, with plenty of optional paths and alternate timelines to keep the dedicated completionist busy for hours. They put shops and towns back into the game, and there’s even some branching dialogue paths—a first for the series.

While they addressed most of the criticisms about Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix wisely didn’t fix what wasn’t broken—the combat. Battles in Final Fantasy XIII-2 remain just as fast and frantic as before, with a need for strategizing and changing things up on the fly. You only have two human party members this time around, but in a true “gotta catch ‘em all” fashion you have a plethora of enemy monsters that can join your cause. The game leaves you hanging for the inevitable FF XIII-3, but the journey is an enjoyable one that any Final Fantasy fan should take.

Write-up by Julian Titus