As someone who enjoyed ME3 more than most, I'm still surprised that so many people don't think the beginning is completely awfully written. EARTH! No time for establishing character. It blows up! You care because it Earth! Kid! Kid dies! Macguffin! It will fix everything without need for further development. Now go to the one part of the galaxy not beset by war and spend some time shopping.

Also did no-one look at the red/brown wasteland Mars, the brown/brown wasteland Palaven, the yellow/brown wasteland Tuchanka, the orange/brown wasteland Rannoch, and think that maybe it would have been nice to not have a grey/brown wasteland Earth? I'm just saying there was probably more artistic possibilities than rocks and dust when visiting the homeworlds of all the major species? And wouldn't it have been nice to talk to someone or see some culture when visiting their homeworlds? It used to be kinda the point of the series.

And wouldn't have been nice if exposition had been delivered in some other way than 3-4 guys talking at you round a table at at least one point in the game?

There was a lot of good stuff, but it was equally present in the ending as it was in the rest of the game

I figure people hated the ending because the bad stuff immediately leading up to it had broken their suspension of disbelief. No-one seemed to mind all the crud in the ME1 ending. (Whoo frog-leaping final villain boss fight amiright?)

Every time I see Mass Effect 3 on one of these I die a little...

Yesss. Hotline Miami. As far as the soundtrack goes, the whole thing is in .ogg format in the game folder, free of charge. Some of the labelling is messy, but... Ah well.

I am sososososososooooooo Happy that The Walking Dead is turning up on a LOT of top games of the year, after I finished the game (and stopped crying) I said "That's Game of the Year, no questions asked" and it makes me beyond happy that its the same for others.

I hope people start porting stuff to the WiiU since I bought myself one for xmas and I never played any of the GOTY games... So if Nintendo would start to port games to the WiiU then I might actually know what people are talking about.
But then again, I think there have been plenty of good titles on the Nintendo so I'm sticking with that :)
Most these games I've watched osme friends play thou so I'm not completely out...

As more Game Of The Year lists come and go, I worry more and more that Spec Ops isn't going to be on any of them D=

And I'm also worrying the TWD isn't going to live up to all the hype now that I've seen it in multiple GOTY lists and such.

Andy Shandy:
As more Game Of The Year lists come and go, I worry more and more that Spec Ops isn't going to be on any of them D=

And I'm also worrying the TWD isn't going to live up to all the hype now that I've seen it in multiple GOTY lists and such.

You are an Escapist. You have nothing to worry about, you will love it.

Simply the fact that you are on this website, obviously a gamer and intelligent to some degree means that you will love the game.

I really need to play ME3, even my brother the most un-critical guy I know said the ending sucked. As long as I get to hang out with Garrus and Tali one more time im sure i'll enjoy it... mostly.

Eh, you knew you were going to get replies like this:

No ME3 was not good if you take away the ending. In fact, apart from the Tuchanka part, which is only really good because of our past affection for characters delivered in previous chapters, this game is bad. The side quests are terrible, the dialog choices may as well not even exist for all the variety they offer, the acting is wooden even for video games, the newly added characters are cringeworthy, the war assets system is poorly conceived or explained, the AI took a hit, virtually every new animation is terrible and the old animations are overused and poorly implemented.

The only improvement this game has over its predecessors is the skill trees. Its really the first ME where multiple builds and power combos make sense within a given class. Apart from that the gameplay is noticably worse than part 2 and the story is lightyears worse than part 1. The ending simply cemented it as one of the largest finale fuckups in gaming history.

You wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be good. Fuck, nearly everyone wanted it to be good. But it wasn't. Quit trying to justify a fandom of the series with this tripe. The game sucks. If parts 1 and 2 had not existed, and thus our desire to see a conclusion to tales we became invested in with much better games, this game would never have gotten much of the positive spin it gets.

I still haven't played 'Miami'.

It keeps getting pushed back in my gaming queue BECAUSE of games like FTL and FC3.
>>

"From start to finish, Mass Effect 3 was a terrific adventure..."

Thanks for putting that at the start and saving me the trouble of reading the rest of the article.

Can you really consider a game that doesn't even come close to standards of their predecessors "absolutely phenomenal"?

I disagree...
With the extended ending, I didn't think the ending of Mass Effect 3 was too bad... I would even call it good if the AMAZING credits music meant a thing.
I found the journey itself boring, as it's made entirely out of references to the previous games, with no story of its own. Every mission in the game followed the same formula. You land somewhere, some people have an issue, then some ME2 character shows up and you work together to solve it... Rinse, repeat. It had me saying "Which character will this mission be about then?". I can't even remember what actually happened in the story anymore.
Also, Kai Leng, or whatever he's called, was an incredibly irritating character.

Vault101:

Mikeyfell:
Every time I see Mass Effect 3 on one of these I die a little...

why? even though I'm as pissed about the ending as anyone I still think it deserves a spot

None of what I'm about to say should be taken as a personal attack against you, okay.

Mass Effect 3 ignored every major choice in the first 2 games
Anderson or Udina for the council seat (Ignored)
Kill or save the council (Both councils are the same)
Kill or release the Rachnai queen (Ignored)
Kaiden or Ashley on Vermire (they're in a coma for half the game)
Morinth or Samara (Morinth is in ME3 for like 3 seconds)
Taking Legion to the Flotilla (Ignored)
Getting Tali exiled (Ignored)
Keep or destroy Kasumi's data (Ignored)
Killing Melon on Tuchanka (Ignored)
Destroying or handing over the Collector base (Cerberus attacks you either way)

All that mattered was
Kill or save Wrex on Vermire
Keep or destroy the Genophage data
rewrite or destroy the herritics

They destroyed every returning character except Tali and Legion (And Grunt I suppose, but it's hard to fuck up Grunt)
Liara was an emotionless blob who never mentioned your relationship after the Mars mission.
Garrus... Garrus... they gave up. Unless you romanced him and saw his "hopeless romantic" arc all he did was spit out one-liners and just forgot about Dr. Hart, Sodonis and Harkin in lieu of acting more and more "badass"
Jack, to my hair pulling agony. She became a do-gooding mother hen in a comically abrupt and absolute tonal shift. Making her borderline psychoses in ME2 seem equally as comical even though she actually had a ton of depth to her character.
EDI, Do I even have to explain this one?
Jacob is still boring.
Miranda is still an insufferable bitch
they couldn't get over the fact that Mordin liked singing Gilbert and Sullivan. (The replaced voice actor didn't help either)
The Illusive Man just got stupid after a while
Everyone else was fine, but not as well written as they were in ME2

The stuff they added was all shit. (I think all these are self explanatory, but if you want me to elaborate I will)
The Crucible=shit
The Catalyst=shit
Kai Leng=Shit
Allers=Super shit
James=fine as a character but every one of his story points is a major plot hole
Steve= I get it, he's gay! now make him an interesting character for fuck's sake!
Javic=not shit, but still lame
EMS bar=shit
Fetch quests=shit
New even more boring and tedious planet scanning=double shit with a cherry on top
Tali's photo shop face=shit

Mechanically
The controls are broken (A button does everything)
The Collision detection is fucked (You want to go into cover, Shepard wants to do a barrel roll. You want to run, Shepard wants to take cover on the wrong side of the door frame)
The AI sucks
The enemies are seriously cheep(Instakill phantoms, and nemesis. the OP turrets, the Biotic blocking smoke, the OP grenades[the grenades coupled with the bad controls and the shit collision detection caused 90%+ of my deaths], the hunters, the flamers, the prime's turrets, the ravagers, the banshees) (If you don't want to spam biotic explosions you better get used to the loading screens.
The conversation system was reduced to binary choices and half the time there was no difference between a paragon choice and a renegade choice. and more often than it should have the paragon and renegade personalities would change places on the wheel (Mostly during the Quarian missions)
It was (I think) 2 months before you could import your Shepard's face from ME 1, and even then not very well.
Eye lines didn't match up (sometimes by 180 degrees)
Character noddles would flicker and pop in and out of scenes

Every aspect of ME 3 seemed rushed or phoned in.

most of the plot revolves around coincidence or plot hole.
Anderson says "Shepard, go to the council!"
Hacket says "Shepard, go to Mars!"
then when you get to the council Shepard says "We found this thing on Mars!"
Yeah, great but what would you have said if Hackett's message didn't get through? Obviously telling the council about the Crucible isn't working so say what you would have said if you didn't go to Mars...
Every aspect of the writing falls apart under even the slightest bit of scrutiny.
How did the Quarians decide to attack the Geth? You have Han Garrel and Admiral Xen in favor of war. You have Tali and Koris against war then you have Raan and what? You're telling me she voted against Tali? But she's the leading voice in trying to get Shepard's help in ending the war. The war that she had the tie breaking vote on, and ended up voting in favor of...
The Crucible! Hundreds if not thousands of cycles have been working on it. It's a power source. it attaches to the Citadel. Wait...What? What if the first cycle that started working on it finished it? What would they have done with it.
Because the game makes it very clear that integration with the Citadel was added late stage in the production.
But it's only purpose was to "Change" the catalyst which was in the Citadel. What did the first cycle that started building it plan on doing with it? If all these cycles had half built Crucibles left over after they got wiped out why didn't the reapers know enough about it to defend against it? If any the first thing the Reapers do every cycle is take over the Citadel who thought it would be a good idea to plug the Crucible into it? Wouldn't the Keepers have told the Reapers about the Crucible?
None of it makes sense.

This game is supposed to be about the story and writing
Mostly because it's made by Bioware, and mostly because the gameplay is all shitty cover based shooting (Even in the two games where the controls weren't completely broken)
So why was so little care given to continuity?
Why were so many major events retconed or ignored?
Why does the plot fall apart under cursory examination?
Why were so many characters sloppily written?
Why were so many arcs ended in teeth grinding cliche?
Why did every romance (except Tali and Samantha Traynor) seem completely stiff and unnatural?
Why did Sam wear her underwear in the shower?
Why would a Renegade Shepard care if some kid got blown up in a shuttle?
Why the ending... Just why?

Why didn't anyone else notice any of this?
and if they did notice this why are they offering it game of the year nods?
This is easily Bioware's worst playing game and worst written game.

Vault101:

Mikeyfell:
snip.

so you didn't like Mass Effect 3...... these lists aren't meant to reflect you or my opinions, I mean I think Skyrim is incredibly overrated and actually pretty bad but I'm not going to say someone is wrong or be meladramatic if they want to put it in their top 5

Yeah, but my sense of self worth is directly proportional to the average word count my forum posts, so if I see a chance to bitch about how much Mass Effect 3 sucked I'm going to take it.

Want to hear what I think about Dishonored? No? Okay...

Well this is the list I agree with most out of all of them.
I would of hoped farcry 3 got mentioned more in other top 5 of 2012 lists, because of its awesome gameplay, graphics, environment, and story.
But thats ok, anyways, I don't know why so many people (on other websites as well) feel the need to only choose 5 games out of a abundance of great games this year.