Editorials
Here Are The Best Games Of The Year, As Chosen By The Bloody Disgusting Staff
It’s that time of the year! 2012 has thrown everything it had at us, including a bevvy of highly anticipated games like Diablo III, Resident Evil 6, and Silent Hill: Downpour — but we made it. Many of us lost friends to the foggy town of Silent Hill, the demon-infested lands surrounding Tristram, or the eerie, deserted town of Night Springs, Arizona. It was tough, but the important thing is we survived. Sure, our social lives took a beating and our wallets are looking particularly thin, but the good news is we have about a month to save up before things pick back up.
In a continuation of our celebration of the glorious year for gaming that 2012 definitely was, the Bloody Disgusting staff has chosen our favorite games of the year. Check them out after the break.
Adam Dodd
Game of the Year: The Walking Dead (360, PS3, PC)
Gamertag: Baby Colada
I can’t say enough good things about Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead. It’s difficult to believe the first episode released way back in April, but what Telltale has done since then for storytelling in games, the adventure genre, and episodic gaming as a whole easily makes this my Game of the Year. This has been a great year. 2012 brought us games like Dishonored, Diablo III, and multiple installments in the Resident Evil and Silent Hill franchises, but choosing this was a no-brainer (pun intended). I can’t wait to see what Telltale does next.
TJ Taraszka
Game of the Year: Minecraft (360)
Minecraft 360. I know, with a lot of heavy hitters that came out this year, why Minecraft? 143 hours, that’s why. The only other game that comes close is 50 something hours put into Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, and that is still low compared to Minecraft. There is something about the game that’s magnetic to me. When I’m sitting around thinking of what game to play, and I’m clueless, I always turn to Minecraft. Endless hours of pointless building makes me feel like a little kid playing with Legos and I love it.
David Harley
Game of the Year: Journey (PS3)
Claiming that Journey is merely a game is a huge disservice to thatgamecompany’s follow-up to Flower. From the moment your faceless, hooded character stands up in the desert until the end of your beautiful – and occasionally perilous – trek, Journey is an experience that encourages exploration and discovery and is the closest you will ever feel to living inside a painter’s masterpiece. It’s a game that needs to played multiple times, both with and without a partner, to enjoy everything it has to offer; single player provides a “stop and smell the roses” playthrough without the possibility of a randomly assigned, experienced partner rushing you to the level’s meditation point, but there is nothing more satisfying that chirping your way to your destination while solving puzzles and soaring through the air with a friendly, unknown companion. Using only four buttons, Journey provides a deep and emotional experience that will stick with you months after you finish.
Honorable Mentions: Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS), Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
Brad Miska
Game of the Year: NBA 2K13 (360)
NBA2K13 left my Xbox only for Halo 4, but soon returned. The graphics are a huge step up from previous years, and without a lockout all rookies were ready to go on opening night. The new version also tells you about new additions as you log in, and has a pretty cool professional mode where you can build your own character’s career. By buying it early I also got the All Star Weekend DLC that has an awesome Slam Dunk competition that plays out like Guitar Hero. And while last year we got all of the legendary teams, this year players can peg the 1992 Dream Team with the 2012 Olympic Team. Who’s the best? Duh, of course it’s any team with Michael Jordan on it… And a quick final note, Aliens is my most anticipated game of 2013. If its not my pick next year, I will be incredibly disappointed.
Tom Owen
Game of the Year: Halo 4 (360)
Gamertag: T4CO 2000
I’m sure this is a pretty typical pick and ends up at the top of many “best of” lists for 2012, but I’m going with Halo 4. Halo 2 was the first game I ever played on XBOX Live and for a long time was the foundation for many nights of excessive pizza and mountain dew consumption with friends. During these nerd fests we also made use of one of mankind’s greatest inventions, the Pizzazz. Halo 4 brought the return of all of it, even the Pizzaz was dusted off and put back in service for the first time in years. It’s far from perfect, but Halo has always been my go to game for casual n00b killing, no scoping, tea bagging, stress relieving fun, and I’m glad to have it back.
Jonathan “Sexiest Man O’ The Year Who Also Has A Luxurious Pelt” Barkan
Game of the Year: Silent Hill: Downpour (360, PS3)
Gamertag: Biz Rizzle
I’d have to go with Silent Hill: Downpour, simply because I didn’t really buy a lot of games this year. However, it was also a really solid game that I enjoyed a great deal.
Want more? Check out our FEAR Awards hub! If you’re still patiently waiting to choose your favorite games of the year, stay tuned, as voting for our fourth annual FEAR Awards will open very soon.
Have a question? Feel free to ever-so-gently toss Adam an email, or follow him on Twitter and Bloody Disgusting.
Editorials
‘Malevolence’: The Overlooked Mid-2000s Love Letter to John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’
Written and Directed by Stevan Mena on a budget of around $200,000, Malevolence was only released in ten theaters after it was purchased by Anchor Bay and released direct-to-DVD like so many other indie horrors. This one has many of the same pratfalls as its bargain bin brethren, which have probably helped to keep it hidden all these years. But it also has some unforgettable moments that will make horror fans (especially fans of the original Halloween) smile and point at the TV like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Malevolence is the story of a silent and masked killer told through the lens of a group of bank robbers hiding out after a score. The bank robbery is only experienced audibly from the outside of the bank, but whether the film has the budgetary means to handle this portion well or not, the idea of mixing a bank robbery tale into a masked slasher movie is a strong one.
Of course, the bank robbery goes wrong and the crew is split up. Once the table is fully set, we have three bank robbers, an innocent mom and her young daughter as hostages, and a masked man lurking in the shadows who looks like a mix between baghead Jason from Friday the 13th Part 2 and the killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Let the slashing begin.
Many films have tried to recreate the aesthetic notes of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, and at its best Malevolence is the equivalent of a shockingly good cover song.
Though the acting and script are at times lacking, the direction, score, and cinematography come together for little moments of old-school slasher goodness that will send tingles up your spine. It’s no Halloween, to be clear, but it does Halloween reasonably proud. The nighttime shots come lit with the same blue lighting and the musical notes of the score pop off at such specific moments, fans might find themselves laughing out loud at the absurdity of how hard the homages hit. When the killer jumps into frame, accompanied by the aforementioned musical notes, he does so sharply and with the same slow intensity as Michael Myers. Other films in the subgenre (and even a few in the Halloween franchise) will tell you this isn’t an easy thing to duplicate.
The production and costume designs of Malevolence hint at love letters to other classic horror films as well. The country location not only provides for an opening Halloween IV fans will appreciate but the abandoned meat plant and the furnishings inside make for some great callbacks to 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. All of this is buoyed and accentuated by cinematography that you rarely see in today’s low-budget films. The film is shot on 35mm film by A&E documentary filmmaker Tsuyoshi Kimono, who gives Malevolence an old-school, grainy, 1970s aesthetic that feels completely natural and not like a cheap gimmick.
Malevolence is a movie that no doubt has some glaring imperfections but it is also a movie that is peppered with moments of potential. There’s a reason they made a follow-up prequel titled Malevolence 2: Bereavement years later (and another after that) that starred both Michael Biehn and Alexandra Daddario! That film tells the origin story of our baghead, Martin Bristol. Something the first film touches on a little bit, at least enough to give you the gist of what happened here. Long story short, a six-year-old boy was kidnapped by a serial killer and for years forced to watch him hunt, torture, and kill his victims. Which brings me to another fascinating aspect of Malevolence. The ending. SPOILER WARNING.
After the mother and child are saved from the killer, our slasher is gone, his bloody mask left on the floor. The camera pans around different areas of the town, showing all the places he may be lurking. If you’re down with the fact that it’s pretty obvious this is all an intentional love letter and not a bad rip-off, it’s pretty fun. Where Malevolence makes its own mark is in the true crime moments to follow. Law enforcement officers pull up to the plant and uncover a multitude of horrors. They find the notebooks of the original killer, which explain that he kidnapped the boy, taught him how to hunt, and was now being hunted by him. This also happened to be his final entry. We discover a hauntingly long line of bodies covered in white sheets: the bodies of the many missing persons the town had for years been searching for. And there are a whole lot of them. This moment really adds a cool layer of serial killer creepiness to the film.
Ultimately, Malevolence is a low-budget movie with some obvious deficiencies on full display. Enough of them that I can imagine many viewers giving up on the film before they get to what makes it so special, which probably explains how it has gone so far under the radar all these years. But the film is a wonderful ode to slashers that have come before it and still finds a way to bring an originality of its own by tying a bank robbery story into a slasher affair. Give Malevolence a chance the next time you’re in the mood for a nice little old school slasher movie.
Malevolence is now streaming on Tubi and Peacock.
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