What did it mean to you?

The year of 2012 was interesting for me. Being primarily a Nintendo gamer, I sort of began running out of things to play. But fear not, my fellow MyIGNers! I had enough stuff that I played to fill up this big blog post! Read on to see more:

      WII

The Wii had an interesting 2012 in that almost nothing came out for that thing. What does that mean for me? It means I got the wonderful chance to go back and play what I've missed. So what did I play?

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is, as I wrote in my review, probably the best on-rails shooter of this generation, or possibly ever. I actually picked this baby up for $5 at Best Buy, and it was well worth my money. Definitely give it a shot when you have the chance.

Rhythm Heaven Fever is my new go-to game when I'm feeling down. It's kinda like comfort food; you feel depressed, play a lil' bit of Rhythm Heaven, and OMG everything feels amazing again. One game in particular, Munchy Munk, just puts you in a trance and makes you forget all of you troubles. Yeah... what a great game.

Xenoblade Chronicles may just be my Game of 2012. You may remember in my review that I adored much about the game and that it introduced me to the wonderful world of the JRPG genre. Though many gamers had a boring summer with no new game releases, I was happily plowing my way into this masterpiece. Long story short, I loved it. Best game I've played in a very long time.

3DS

The 3DS also had an interesting 2012 in that I also didn't have much to play for it. I did, though, upgrade to my sexy blue 3DS XL on Black Friday, which meant I could re-experience all of my game in EXTRA LARGE. It was glorious!

Nano Assault is a game that actually came out in 2011, but I bought it after Majesco dropped its price to twenty bucks. It's funny how well a twin-stick shooter can work on a system with only one stick, eh? Love that game!

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a game that I slightly love less. I did enjoy it a lot, and yes it did tell you to collect every single coin out there, but it didn't really evolve the series NSMB Wii did. I still liked the game though, and you can look forward to my review some time in the future.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star is interesting in that I was hoping for it to be TTYD2, but instead it was like a Paper Mario games slapped onto a Zelda mold. The ideas for the game are great, and I actually like them better than TTYD. Unfortunately, how these ideas are executed was a bit disappointing. That being said, I honestly wouldn't mind seeing a Sticker Star 2, as long as, of course, it's better.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is my 3DS game of the year. It has so many things that Nintendo games nowadays lack: story, character, personality... it's all there. Of course, there are some design flaws that seriously hold the game back (cough cough camera controls cough) but it is, overall, a well-designed game. I picked this baby up for $15 at Best Buy, but I would have gladly paid $40 for it!

STEAM

I finally got a good enough rig last Christmas to finally get my taste at PC gaming. With the Wii and 3DS not satisfying my gaming needs, naturally, I turned to Steam. And boy did I wish I discovered this thing earlier. Of course, much of my experience with Steam is going back and playing the games I missed as a Wii-only gamer, but that's fine. Those Steam sales let me play those for cheap!

Since my Steam list is actually quite long, I'll just do a quickfire of all of them in a weirdly confusing manner, okay? Let's begin

Bastion really is a pretty game, eh? Darksiders isn't so pretty. But LIMBO is FRIGGEN GORGEOUS! Portal is also a pretty great game, don't you think? I gave that game a 9.2 or something. But Portal 2 is friggen crazy. I finished that game in like 7 hours, but I enjoyed EVERY SECOND OF IT! I also got to play a lot of Super Meat Boy. That also means I got to die a lot in Super Meat Boy. I also wanted to kill myself by the end of Super Meat Boy. But my indie love doesn't stop there. I played Trine, which is a very, very, very slow puzzle platformer. Trine 2, to my dismay, was even slower, but you can watch me play the prologue here. Also, The Witcher is really, really creepy. Like, really.

And one more thing: Cloudberry Kingdom is amazing. Definitely go out and buy that game when it comes out early next year and support a great indie developer!

Whew!

So, what did the year of 2012 mean to me as a gamer? It meant expanding my horizons. I'm not a fan of shooters, yet I picked up Kid Icarus, Sin & Punishment 2, and Nano Assault. I've never purchased a game on Steam before, yet now I'm the proud owner of over 20 PC games. I wasn't really all that willing dig into the JRPG genre, but Xenoblade allowed me to understand why it is so loved by so many gaming generations.

2012 has been great to me. I hope it was equally as great for you guys.

What did 2012 mean to you in gaming?