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What were our favorites in each genre in 2012?

Sleeping Dogs - Winner

Originally in development as True Crime: Hong Kong, Activision decided to pull the plug on a nearly finished project. Square Enix picked up the pieces and made the very smart move of funding United Front Games to finish the job. After a name change we received Sleeping Dogs, one of the sleeper hits of the year.

It's not very original, but everything is done exceptionally well. You traverse an open world version of Hong Kong where you can steal cars, get into fights, and complete a ton of optional side quests. The combat is extremely similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Success relies on timed attacks and counters in order to seamlessly fight a horde of gangsters. The game mostly relies on this hand-to-hand combat and, much like Arkham Asylum, its endless amounts of fun. The gun mechanics are taken from Max Payne, including a slow motion bullet time effect ,which is essential to winning gun battles. It also features limited parkour wall climbing, similar to Assassin’s Creed, which allows you to easily scale walls and run around the many alleys and rooftops.

The story is also derivative, but it does a great job of creating an engaging crime story filled with likeable characters. Grand Theft Auto is infamous for a world where everyone is crooked, but Sleeping Dogs shows the life of an undercover cop where you see the good and bad in the police force, and all the grey areas of gang life. The story will never move you emotionally, but it always stays interesting and makes for a convincing backdrop to addictive gameplay.

The game is on the shorter side for a sandbox game, lasting anywhere from 20 to 30 hours, but is still plenty of time to spend in Hong Kong. With a ton of side missions, including extremely fun car and bike races, you won’t run out of entertainment until you’ve done everything Sleeping Dogs has to offer.

Sleeping Dogs is an easy recommendation. It's tough to find any issues with the game, and every inch of it is a blast to play.

Write-up by Vic Roman

Assassin's Creed III - Runner Up

Assassin’s Creed III has undeniably one of the largest and most fruitful sandboxes this year. While some of the plot and stylistic choices about the American Revoltion may be under the microscope by fans of the series, nobody could deny that these developers have created a vast and varied sandbox. Between Boston, New York, the Frontier, the Sea, and the Homestead, the player is left with a wealth of options and significantly more hours worth of content than any adventure game could hope to match.

The developers have peppered the two major cities with content like assassination contracts, liberation missions, homestead missions and fort liberations. In addition, many of the prerequisite chores like synchronizing from high points make their returns. Luckily for some fans, the more traditional content in each area is not required this time around: it is mostly included as a vestigial to show how far the franchise has come. Instead, players get to chase pages to put together volumes of Poor Richard’s Almanac in order to piece together invention schematics in the process. Assassination contracts and liberation missions both add a small army of helpers to the hero’s cause, which make AC3 a much more fulfilling and rich game in the process.

Similarly, homestead missions and fort liberations should be sought out by all players of this game. These two inclusions make an already crowded game even more lifelike. Juxtaposing the menial tasks of homestead missions -- that round out and expand upon the characters who choose to live on the same plot of land as the hero -- with fort liberation missions go a long way to show the danger the average citizen had to go through every day during the American Revolution. Riots could break out at any moment and there was a good chance that Loyalists would be commandeering a fort near the average citizen’s home. The same tension has been recreated faithfully in Assassin’s Creed III.

With so many options throughout the four areas of play, this is a revolution worth fighting for.

Write-up by Patrick  Kijek