What Was Your 2012 Video Game of the Year?

by Chris Littlechild

2/4/2013 9:35:44 PM 244 Chris Littlechild

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What Was Your 2012 Video Game of the Year?

My Vote: Final Fantasy IX

I’ll concede, the ninth iteration of the much-vaunted Final Fantasy franchise is over a decade old at this juncture. As such, you could fire derisive comments such as WHAT IN THE NAME OF SATAN’S SWEATY SCROTUM ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT directly at my delicate face. You COULD do this, like the mocking mocksters of mock that some of us are.

There have been, lest we forget, a myriad of high-profile releases in 2012, any of which would warrant a place in the lofty heights of video game heaven, scratching their crotches with leisurely abandon while bosomy maidens feed them caviar from golden platters (or something to that effect). Perhaps there are supermodels up there to give the games decadent, luxurious massages. In the crotch area. We just don’t know.

You may cite Halo 4, Assassin’s Creed 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, or another illustrious progeny of this fading year as 2012‘s best. As I’ve said, though, it was another foray into a decrepit release from 2000 -a droopy-boobed, incontinent octogenarian that pees its blankets in retirement homes in video game years- that was my highlight the last twelve months of gaming.

It’s a lamentable truth that, upon returning to a title we cherished so in our childhood, we’ll oftentimes discover that it did, in fact, SUCK MONKEY NUTS. Those oft-maligned rose-tinted glasses slip from our faces onto the muddy, muddy ground -that somebody’s dog has taken a dump on- and we see what an unadulterated Satan’s bum-egg an erstwhile favorite truly was. In this instant, childhoods are invalidated, righteous tears of furious salty sadness are shed, and middle fingers are furiously brandished at the parents who permitted this egregious error of judgment to occur, those many years ago.

And who wants THAT? No one, that’s who. It’s fortuitous indeed, then, that the fleeting free-time months of 2012 I spent traversing Final Fantasy IX once more were not in vein. Even in its original, not-a-pixel-augmented form, its endearingly ‘toon-tinged locales are sumptuous, particularly with regards to the equally-acclaimed entries (“Hey, Final Fantasy VII! How are you? Still got those enormous, Elephant Man-esque square freak-hands? Thought so.”). The mechanics, I’d venture, don’t have that clunk-tastic, archaic feel of the early releases, nor the sense of simplification that was inherent more recently. Ardent Fantasy-ers often proclaim that the prolific ‘PlayStation era’ was the golden age for the series, and having Final Fantasy IX as the swansong surely attests to this.

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