First of all, a quick reminder that my Game of the Year doesn’t necessarily have to come out in 2012.  Because I don’t have the time to dedicate to video games, the price premium of buying it new rarely makes sense to me.  So my Game of the Year will be my favorite game that I played in 2012.

As I compiled my list I realized that I played a lot less games in 2012.  I may not have played a lot less hours (I haven’t bothered comparing the totals with 2011), but I definitely had a lot less variety.  A lot of that has to do with the birth of my daughter this year.  Only as the year has gone on have I been able to carve out some time here and there to play story-based games.  In addition, I resumed pursuing my master’s degree in the fall, right around the time I was able to have a bit more time to myself.  I didn’t have any gameplay at all in March, September or October.

[caption id=“attachment_5240” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“Team Fortress 2”] [/caption]

Civilization V (75 hrs) - What can I say about this game that I haven’t said already?  This is the series that made “One More More Turn…” famous and it still works today.  If I were to start a game tonight, I would not go to bed at a reasonable time.

This game that’s been capturing nearly all my free time in February was an impulse buy.  At $10 I might have passed it up, but in a midweek sale it was $5 and I decided it looked interesting enough to pick up.  This is a great example of what I spoke about here with respect to getting more people to buy a digital good by putting it on sale even if they don’t have shelf space to clear.  Part of what drew me to the game was the decidedly retro-futuristic art style.  It gives the game a very unique set of visuals.  The 1920-40s music (I’m not 100% sure which decade) also helps add to the atmosphere.