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In a year that saw ups and downs, two genres emerged king: sequels and downloadables. Forgetting Ninja Gaiden 3 and Avatar Driving for a second (hopefully forever), 2012 was home to fantastic titles like The Walking Dead, Journey, Assassin’s Creed III, Hotline Miami, Far Cry 3 and Forza Horizon. While there were new IPs, the ones that weren’t downloadable tended to crash and burn.

After this year, the gaming landscape will surely change; publishers and the mainstream media will take notice of independent developers…and we’ll probably also see a Halo 5. Until then, though, let’s take a trip through the best games of 2012 separated into handy categories seen below as we present Hardcore Gamer’s 2012 GOTY Awards. (Spoiler alert: Family Guy: Road to the Multiverse didn’t win anything.)

* Genre Awards * * Specialty Awards * * Platform Awards * * Game of the Year *

Don’t forget to take a look at what our own editors had to say and what games they personally believed were worthy of Top Ten recognition:

Steve “Dack” Hannley

Jake Whritenour

Jeremy “JPeeples” Peeples

Bradly Hale

Adam Beck

James Cunningham