My Top Five

My top five video games of 2012.

5: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (ps3, xbox,pc)

  This faithful remake of the classic early ‘90s strategy game makes tactics accessible to console gamers. Clever strategy is crucial during the turn-based battles, but you’ll have to be just as smart running the bureaucratic side of XCOM and planning what new facilities to build and trying to balance the concerns of numerous panic-stricken nations. It will infiltrate your brain and keep you up at night.

4:Dragon's Dogma (ps3, xbox 360)

Epic role-playing game Dragon’s Dogma is the game that keeps on giving. Hardcore difficulty and epic real time action make this RPG like no other.  It doesn't end where you think it will, growing more exciting as it goes before allowing players to tackle a New Game+ mode that’s actually worth playing.

3: The Walking Dead (ps3, xbox 360, pc)

Telltale’s The Walking Dead is one of the best licensed games of all time because of the way it re-creates the pacing and feel of the comic series. It’s heavy on character interaction and suspense, like the comic and show, and light on puzzles and item hunting. Action sequences are spread out; this is not Left 4 Dead or Dead Island but a character-driven game with action elements only added in when completely necessary.

2: Journey (ps3)

No game has ever been as succinctly named as Journey. That’s all this game is about, my forward momentum as I undertake a mysterious quest. I don’t know why I’m doing it, or what waits for me on the mountaintop, but I know it must be done. In reducing the journey to its most primordial form,Journey attains a universal power. Instead of wilting under this asceticism, thatgamecompany wrings as much as they can out of their self-imposed rules, ending with a surprisingly poignant conclusion that hits an emotional high the rest of their game doesn’t even attempt.

1: Borderlands 2 (ps3, xbox 360, pc)

Borderlands 2 does what sequels are supposed to do, making improvements where it must, and trying hard not to disrupt anything that made its predecessor a success. No doubt it is a superior game to the first, but it’s still all about whetting a primal hunger for the next reward. As you traverse the wastelands with a laundry list of uncompleted mission objectives, a progress bar nearly filled with enough XP to nudge you up a level, and the infinite promise of undiscovered loot, you feel forever on the verge of something great.