Number 1 game of 2012

As he moves forward, the landscape becomes less and less grounded until, at its most fantastic, he is finally able to deal with his relationship to the monster that represents his father. Developer : Blizzard Publisher : Blizzard Platforms : PC and Mac With Diablo III a lot of the social joys of the series are gone, but the feeling of taking down a nightmarish group of special enemies remains unmatched. Developer : Gearbox Software Publisher : 2K Games Platforms : Xbox , PlayStation 3 and PC Borderlands 2 does what sequels are supposed to do, making improvements where it must, and trying hard not to disrupt anything that made its predecessor a success.

As you traverse the wastelands with a laundry list of uncompleted mission objectives, a progress bar nearly filled with enough XP to nudge you up a level, and the infinite promise of undiscovered loot, you feel forever on the verge of something great. Developer : Industries Publisher : Microsoft Platform : Xbox I think a lot of people were asking the wrong question when they pondered whether i would make as good a steward of the Halo franchise as had Bungie.

What I wanted to know was whether or not i could drag Halo out of the miserable hole that was Reach. Nothing has done with Halo 4 has irreparably broken the core of what makes a game Halo. The many permutations of game-dictated events and your accumulated decisions allow for a rewarding variety of experience.

The light story elements that are present in FTL are a distant shadow of the stories players generate through the game mechanics. Developer : Yager Development Publisher : 2K Games Platforms : Xbox , PlayStation 3 and PC In Spec Ops: The Line the real cowards are the players, content to ignore real wars for false ones, spending their money on yearly installments of war games that aim to entertain rather than inform, to dull rather than comment on any aspect of reality.

We just want an escape from the dangers of mundanity, no matter what the cost. It is just the surface. The secret puzzles you stumble across in various rooms, the ones that lead you to the anticubes, are the real meat of the game.

Sometimes they require you to look a little bit outside of the world, or look at it through a different lens, to solve them. Every element of the game serves a musical purpose. Instead of simple obstacles to avoid or monsters to dispatch enemies are drum machines that contribute to the beat. Sound Shapes surreptitiously teaches you how to build and arrange songs while enjoying one of the most beautiful and memorable games of the year. This fast, capable, business-minded inkjet multifunction is a leader among the new generation of no-regrets inkjets for the office.

The best-balanced among many strong contenders, it brings swift performance, spiffy output quality, and a whopping sheets of standard input. Ink is cheap, too. Low-end color lasers should be worried. Lytro Light-Field Camera digital camera. This tube-like camera lets you shoot photos quickly and decide where to focus and refocus later. Microsoft Type Cover tablet keyboard. Your fingertips will thank you. Pinterest online social sharing service.

The versatility of this service—you can also use it for event planning and building shopping lists—rendered Pinterest the fastest-growing website to date. Maingear pulled out all the stops to build this super-powered PC, which tore through our benchmarks to generate a Worldbench 7 score of — percent faster than our baseline. The top-shelf components in this rig should keep any gamer satisfied for a least a couple of years. Panasonic HC-VM camcorder. The built-in video light and flash work exceptionally well, capturing clean, crisp video and still shots from as far as 10 feet.

Colors appear realistic with little or no oversaturation, and with hardly any blurring during fast pans. Firaxis makes the classic genre feel brand new: The game rewards patience and strategic thinking while you build up your forces to repel an alien invasion.

Oh yeah. Worth it? Hell yeah! This NAS box lets you start small and scale up. A great NAS for both home and business.

Microsoft Sculpt Touch Mouse computer mouse. This DIY package is reasonably priced, exceptionally well thought out, and very easy to install. The best kit comes with a local alarm; door, window, and motion sensors; a thermostat; and basic lighting controls. Webcams that deliver video at p resolution are a dime a dozen.

This well-designed, well-engineered webcam also has a versatile mounting clip that keeps it securely fastened to your display.

Yes, it will drive even ohm headphones, but it also boasts balanced XLR outputs so you can connect it to the finest analog amplifiers. It is an exquisite piece of gear. This is the first truly portable inkjet multifunction, squeezing a sheet-fed scanner into its compact form and including a full battery for on-the-go usage.

Bluetooth connectivity lets you print from mobile phones and tablets. Playing World of Warcraft with an ordinary mouse after playing with the Razer Naga will feel like bringing a banana to a knife fight.

Hero Academy video game. Outwit your opponents through brute force or calculated strikes. Falling squarely between the consumer and prosumer worlds, this camcorder performs like a champ. It boasts extraordinary ability to produce crisp videos in challenging shooting situations, and the optical image stabilization works phenomenally well. Auto-focus struggles occasionally, but color accuracy stays spot-on. Damn Small Linux operating system. We saw a flurry of new Linux distros in , but DSL is particularly notable because of its size.

This operating system will run on older computers that would collapse under the weight of Windows or any other mainstream OS. As such, it can breathe new life into old hardware. Axis P IP video camera. Small-business owners looking for professional-quality video surveillance will appreciate the features Axis delivers with its model P IP camera: This model delivers precision optics, true HDTV resolution, and h.

Stardock Multiplicity 2. Apple TV media streamer. This third-gen Apple TV sports a new processor capable of playing video at p, but the real star of the show is the new software update that will run on the older p Apple TV, too. If you like AirPlay and the iTunes store, this is the video streamer to buy. Dishonored video game. An epic departure from the typical computer game, Dishonored is set in a steampunk universe where technology and supernatural powers coexist.

Truly this is an experience, one that deserves the crossover potential into the mainstream art collective that it seems to be garnering, at least thanks to the well-deserved Grammy nod for its soundtrack.

I liked Flower and flOw, thatgamecompany's two previous titles. But I didn't just like Journey -- I loved how human it made me feel. I played through Journey only once. Like watching a movie that unexpectedly grapples with your soul, the two hours I spent with Journey were such an undiluted and meaningful experience that I don't want to risk tarnishing it by going back.

Why is this game better than everything else in ? To me, Journey is the purest distillation of the narrative cycle in the interactive medium. The player is wordlessly guided through an impeccably paced adventure along a very well-defined plot line. From my journey's inception in the desert, along the joyous swells and harrowing pitfalls, and all the way through to its stark conclusion, I was enthralled by the wordless story I was experiencing. I was discovering the beauty of a seemingly endless world while also celebrating a newfound sense of purpose in writing my own narrative.

When I stumbled and fell, it seemed less like my mistake and more like something that just had to happen. The other people who came and went from my world seemed like supporting characters in my own personal story, not other players plugged in to their own PlayStations.

In a way, Journey might be the pinnacle of the interactive narrative. It takes the concepts of gameplay and storytelling, boils them down to their core components, and discovers something almost revelatory: They're one and the same. After roughly two hours of gaming, I watched the credits roll and had a small tear or two in my eye.

I had a full Journey, so to speak. I love large, sprawling games as much as anyone else. I love sports games with complex controls, and hour single-player games with multiple side-stories and branching paths.

That simplicity is everywhere. Plus, I already went into detail regarding this game in my Number 3 Patriots Moment , so I won't be repeating myself here.

The buttfumble represents the second of the three touchdowns the Patriots scored in the span of 52 seconds, and the one for which that game will most be remembered.

All I'll do before we get into it is reiterate that Jets were hosting the Patriots on Thanksgiving night, a time slot that the Jets owner specifically requested the NFL schedule in order to give his team more exposure, in what would become the highest rated Thursday Night Football Game to date. The Patriots came into town expecting a close, hard fought match, and as it would turn out, the only thing close about this one was the first quarter and the proximity of a certain quarterback's face to a certain lineman's patoot.

After going scoreless for the first 15 minutes of the game, New England opened the 2nd quarter with a quick Brady-to-Welker strike to put them on the board for the first time.

Shortly after, New England scored an 83 yard Brady-to-Vereen touchdown after stuffing the Jets on 4th and 1 to get the ball back and take a two score lead. It was absolutely essential for Mark Sanchez to engineer a scoring drive on the ensuing possession in order to regain some lost momentum and avoid potentially going down three touchdowns.

Starting from his own 20, he was able to find Clyde Gates in the flat for a quick 1st down. Not a bad start. Unfortunately for Sanchez, in absolutely every sense of the word, he was about to meet a bad end.

New England, anticipating the run, came out in a heavy package with Aqib Talib alone against McKnight and Steve Gregory cheating up towards the left side of the line to supplement Jermaine Cunningham's rush. Sanchez snapped the ball and turned to make the handoff for what was supposed to be a counter run to the left, but running back Shonn Greene was nowhere to be found. Sensing the busted play, Sanchez quickly turned around and took the ball himself in hopes of salvaging the play with a slide or a short run for a few yards.

Right around this time, Vince Wilfork was matched up in single coverage against guard Brandon Moore. From the opening snap, Wilfork began steadily pushing Moore back, closing down Greene's initial running lane and slowly collapsing the integrity of the entire offensive line.

As fate would have it, Wilfork got one last big push on Moore at almost the exact moment that Sanchez was making his run up the gut. Just as Sanchez appeared to be beginning his slide, he had what can only be described as a close encounter of the turd kind, slamming facemask first into the ample posterior of his lineman. Whether it was from the impact, shock, or sheer embarrassment, that rumpy collision was enough to knock the ball loose, where it rolled right into Gregory's arms.

Gregory picked the ball up, strolled effortlessly into the end zone, and the Patriots were suddenly up Al Michaels and Chris Collinsowrth, who were calling the game, sat in stunned disbelief as they watched the replay and confirmed that Sanchez had in fact slammed his facemas s k into his lineman's butt, causing a fumble and a defensive touchdown.

Based on the absurdity of this play, I might have ranked the buttfumble number one on this list even if it didn't come against the Patriots; watching Mark Sanchez plow face first into his lineman's behind was one of the purest joys I have ever felt as a Pats fan.

However, since it did come against the Patriots, and it came against them on national television during my absolute favorite day of the year, the buttfumble takes the one slot and it isn't even close. Honestly, that is the kind of play that defines an entire career; when Sanchez retires gets cut by the Jets and eventually finds himself out of football, whenever that may be, his primary legacy to the National Football League will be being on the business end of an ass as his team gets absolutely obliterated in front of the entire country.

To be honest, that's the kind of play that would define almost any quarterback's career; had Tom Brady, Peyton Manning , Joe Montana, or Johnny Unitas buttfumbled their way into the history books, the play would most certainly be playing on loop as the Hall of Fame Committee cast their ballots. Obviously, quarterbacks of that caliber have the on-field awareness to avoid giant butts that may or may not impede one's progress, so there's no way it would have happened to them.

Sanchez, on the other hand