Why these game of the year candidates are not my candidates for game of the year but some are still good while like one is pretty terrible.

So 2012 has been a bit of a ho-hum year in the gaming realm. Somewhere in the deepest, darkest corners of my mind I’ve begun to possessedly mould and carve my top 10 games list into the vile, insane creature it was born to be, celebrating all the games that actually did something worthwhile this year, but there’ll be a few key experiences missing from said list. Time to get off my chest just which unfortunate beasts these are and why they failed to tame thumbs.

Mass Effect 3 – Okay, in a nutshell I think Mass Effect 2 is a clumsy shooter and an underwhelming RPG mashed into a ‘story’ that was largely forgettable to make for an entirely overrated game (it was a fairly large nut). If you were nice enough to return to this paragraph after scolding me in the comments, you’ll be surprised to hear that I don’t think the same of Mass Effect 3.

BioWare’s third effort is a much-improved shooter with punchy weapons and nimbler enemies. It’s also a better RPG, with larger skill trees, even if that’s by an inch and not a mile. Sure, that whole ending mess left a bit of a dent in things (and the team’s decision to cave to fan pressure was an even bigger mess), but I really enjoyed the 30 hours leading up to that final five minutes.

So why the omission? Because for all its improvements over 2, ME3 is still a shallow imitation of the RPG glory that was the original game. Sure, Mass Effect 1 is like a robin reliant when stacked up to its Bugatti brothers on a technical front, but it boasts the RPG chops to send those more accessible games back to the drawing board. Mass Effect 1 was unmistakeably an RPG first and a shooter second, and the series' journey further into Gears of War territory has been, for me, one of the sadder stories of the generation.

Dishonoured – There’s a u in that spelling, simple as.

Anyways, Dishonoured was my big hope for the Christmas season – a fresh IP boasting the atmosphere to take on BioShock and the gameplay freedom to sit next to Deus Ex. I loved its setting and British aesthetic and I loved its focus on stealth gameplay, but of the experience as a whole I can only say it was one I liked.

This is a game that absolutely had the potential to test my patience and ‘skills’ (I don’t like using that word when talking about games). I’m a bit of a masochist – if there’s a Very Hard mode, I have to do it. Even then I spent a good minutes deciding between Dishonoured’s two highest difficulty levels, fearing that Very Hard may be so tough that I’d ruin my first playthrough. Still, I chose the impossible and… ended up having no trouble whatsoever. Arcane’s creation may buck many trends in the current AAA gaming scene but it sure as hell doesn’t when it comes to difficulty.

Dishonoured hands it’s most useful power at the start of the game - Blink. From there on in, sneaking becomes laughably easy, allowing you to teleport straight past enemies. With no real limit to the amount you can use such a power, there’s really very little to fear from the guards (that feature worse dialogue than Oblivion) for the entirety of the game.

Add to that the surprising brevity of every mission in the game (even the final task took me no longer than half an hour), and you’ve got a game with serious promise but an even more serious lack of challenge. Maybe the sequel can provide such a fix.

Journey – Okay, the alarm bells are ringing now, I can tell. That’s completely fair – Journey is a beautiful, unique and stunning videogame that, with a little bit of digging, can offer a much more memorable experience than most of the titles committed to discs and labelled £40 this year. And I do love it; I think it’s a hugely emotional piece of work that should be celebrated and remembered for years to come.

Problem? The game that came before it – Flower.

While Journey is a resounding success to most, for me it largely hit all the same notes as the breath-taking middle chapter of thatgamecompany’s PSN trilogy. Both start with these eye-watering, peaceful worlds that successfully hide the deeper messages behind the gameplay while showing you the basics. But at around the hour mark, both start to touch upon their relevant evils. Flower’s brilliant grassy planes are invaded by industrialisation while Journey’s soothing tranquility comes under attack from a race of horrid flying… things.

Both game’s threats continue to become more prominent in the following hour, leading into a penultimate act that sets a bleak outlook for the ending, only for everything to conclude in a burst of colour and joy. I remember the feeling I had inside during Flower’s incredible closing moments as you purged the environment of rusty waste, but when it came to Journey those closing moments sadly hinged upon a lingering sense of repetition. As such, Journey loses some of the punch that I have no doubt many of you experienced when playing.

There’s no debating that Journey is an amazing game, I just sadly played Flower first.

Assassin’s Creed III – Okay, time to stop pulling the punches and eloquently reasoning. I was still nice to the last three games, but Assassin’s Creed III is crap. Its controls suck, its fighting is still terrible, and for some reason it thinks it’s a good idea to spend the first four hours of the game not being the character it’s advertised for the last six months. I hate it. It’s as boring and redundant as all the other Assassin’s games, only the disappointment is even more crushing when taking the potential of the new setting into account.

Why is there a button to just hold down to run? It makes free-running clumsy and lazy. Why do enemies just line up for you to counter them and kill them? Why, when putting so much effort into setting, presentation and story, do Ubisoft continuously forget that there’s a game to be played here.

Assassin’s Creed III is the enemy of fun.