Let's wrap this up, then.
1. Kid Icarus: Uprising (Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo, 2012)
Well that was an easy decision.
With all due respect to Theatrhythm, I'm quite glad it did not end up my favourite game of 2012, because it wouldn't even make #2 most years. To some extent I'm a little disappointed with the games I played this year; plenty of them are good but none really entered into the ranks of my all-time favourites. Until, as the twelfth and final new game of the year, I picked up Kid Icarus: Uprising.
Uprising is technically part of the Kid Icarus franchise, although over two decades have passed since the previous game in that franchise, and Uprising bears little resemblance to its predecessors. While those games were sidescrollers, Uprising is an entirely different genre... two of them, in fact. The game is divided between two segments: a flying, on-rails shooter similar to Star Fox, and a ground-based 3D action game featuring a mix of melee and ranged combat, somewhat akin to Devil May Cry. Somewhat stunningly it succeeds at making both segments a lot of fun, although it's pretty obvious that the latter is the richer experience.
Rather remarkably, the game gets by in both modes with just three methods of control, rather than the larger array of buttons many games lean on. Despite this, the flexibility afforded by two of these (the analog stick and the stylus) allows for a fair deal of freedom. In flying sections, they allow the player to move one way while shooting something completely different, with the stylus directing shots far faster than any other control scheme (analog stick, mouse, etc.) could. In ground sections, the stylus gets a second function in addition to aiming: camera control. It sounds hectic to give the stylus the two responsibilities at once but ends up feeling natural. The third and final control is the shooting button. Not much need be said about this function except that it handles in a way I wish more games would. You don't have to mash the button repeatedly if you want to fire repeatedly (just hold it down) and you don't have to hold it down to charge (just don't fire it). It's a far better model than is seen in other games like Mega Man and Metroid and I wish more games would adopt it. The game's targetting system allows it to get away with just having one button for ranged and melee attacks: target an enemy in melee range, and you'll use a melee attack; otherwise, you'll fire at your target. It generally works quite well though there are occasional enemies you really only want to hit with one attack type so choosing the wrong type by mistake is annoying.
Enemy design is generally quite good. The game has a shockingly large number of different enemies which nevertheless manage to feel memorable in terms of how they attack, how you avoid them, and what methods of attack work best at taking them down. Bosses, while not up to the standards of the genre's all-time greats, are also quite good, although this is only easily appreciated on higher difficulties. Speaking of difficulties, the game does a great job of having a huge range of them available. The default difficulty of 2 is rather easy, but options exist to play from difficulty 0 (which borders on gameplay skip) and difficulty 9 which is so grueling that even after dozens upon dozens of hours of playing I never did beat a level on that difficulty. Die in a level, and you restart at a checkpoint, but the difficulty will lower (unless it's already at two) so you're in no danger of ultimately picking a difficulty which is "too hard", although you do lose some hearts (currency) for overestimating your own abilities. Since the rewards from a level increase with difficulty, there's a strong incentive to pick the hardest difficulty on which you can beat a level without dying, which is pretty fun.
So there's a lot to like about the gameplay, but how about other aspects of the game? Perhaps somewhat surprisingly for both a Nintendo first-party title and an action game, the writing is actually, legitimately very good! The game is primarily a comedy, but an extremely smart and self-aware one. The story follows Pit, the justice-driven angelic warrior with an insatiable appetite for food and hot springs, and Palutena, his patron goddess who balances her role as the overlord of all things good with a habit of trolling everyone around her. The interplay between the two characters is a lot of fun to follow and manages to remain fresh throughout the game, but they are aided considerably by the injection of many other memorable characters, from Viridi the sarcastic nature goddess bent on wiping out humanity, to Hades the roguish and affably evil lord of the underworld, to Pyrrhon the sun god who is pretty much the large ham superhero dialled up to eleven. Even the bit players manage to be memorable and the game manages to string them along with a very high quality of writing, full of humourous fourth-wall breaking and references. The game's serious plot gets paid relatively less attention, but it's actually not bad at points (better than most primarily humourous game stories, in my estimation), although never the reason one would play the game.
The story is also presented, for the most part, not in cutscenes but through dialog which runs alongside the gameplay. While at times the two can distract from each other (it can be a little difficult to pay close attention to lines when dodging through a bullet hell), overall it works extremely well and keeps the pacing of the story brisk. Like many of Uprising's other good ideas, I'm left wondering why more games don't do this more often, although in fairness there are plenty of genres and story moments it simply wouldn't work for. Even if the simultaneously gameplay and dialog annoys the player, the game offers two solutions: low intensity is stress-free enough that the player can devote all attention to the story, and if the dialog is distracting it can be turned off entirely (though doing so makes you a bad person). For the game's few "true" cutscenes, sceneskip can be applied, and will be if it's a scene before or in the middle of a boss fight that kills you a bunch of times repeatedly. Not that this, er, happened to me of course.
Aesthetically, the game features good art, with a bevy of well-done facial expressions to help with communicating the game's snappy dialog, and rather unremarkable graphics. The game makes a decent use of the 3DS' 3D technology (though less good than Mario Kart 7), for all that I didn't use it much. Musically the game is an excellent piece of work co-authored by the famous Mitsuda and Sakuraba, with every stage having at least one (usually two) unique pieces of music, and most of the major characters having set leitmotifs associated with them. The on-rails flight sections allow music to be synced nicely to the stage itself, which is used to both dramatic and humourous effect (if I were Pit, I'd be worried when the music stopped dead, too...). Unfortunately the game only has two boss tracks, one of which is used for roughly 90% of the bosses, but fortunately said track is pretty rockin'.
The game doesn't make many errors, but most of what it does questionably is in the area of its controls. While the three-controls thing already mentioned generally works well, the combination of analog and stylus makes it a little awkward to hold the 3DS, though gamers have come up with various solutions and once you get used to it, it's not bad. Perhaps the more pressing concern is that the game has a rarely-used fourth control, which is to use a bomb (flight) or powerup (ground). While the game provides several ways of doing so (either pressing a certain place on the touchscreen or using the D-pad) both involve lifting one finger or stylus to a different place and can be difficult to do on the extremely short notice that such actions often require.
The game's decision to hand out weapons and powerups as random prizes also seems questionable. While the game does a pretty good job with weapon balance and making them feel different, the acquisition method remains a bit bizarre, probably another example of MMO game philosophy bleeding into games these days. Ultimately it doesn't really hurt the game, though.
The game isn't perfect. It has some small flaws, as already touched on. There are things about the game, such as its boss design, which is good but not the outstanding that a 10/10 game of the genre demands. Still, it's extremely good. The game held my attention for some 60-75 hours of gameplay with its difficulty modes and its achievement hunts, with its fast pace and the sharp writing I didn't mind reliving. For a first go-through that's a huge number for me, and I have no doubt whatsoever that I will at some point return and put in even more. It's truly an outstanding game that I recommend to anyone who owns the system and has even a passing interest in the genre, as its adjustable difficulty makes it approachable and enjoyable for all levels. And for those who don't own the system... what are you waiting for?
The good: Pretty much everything; great gameplay and writing and music, difficulty levels
The bad: Some ultimately minor control issues
The ugly: Most of Hades' Inside Story
Rating: 9.5/10
