A rear in your view. I mean. A year in review. 2012.

December 21st, 2012. The end of human civilization? Probably not. A good night to get drunk? Absolutely. An excuse to get my “top ten things about 2012″ article in to Brent a bit early? For sure. It’s been a pretty quick and painless year. I’d like to thank my girlfriend, friends, and family for being awesome as usual. But this article isn’t about them. It’s about totally useless shit that made me smile, laugh, or stare in horror at 2012 AD. So without further ado, in no particular order…

10. Gaffe-fest 2012

I love politics. I hate the fact that the political spectrum in our country is so batshit crazy, but I absolutely love watching two millionaires have total meltdowns while begging us poor-folk to give them supreme power. This election season was a gaffe-addled shitstorm of insanity. Thank you, President Obama and Mitt Romney for providing every comedian on Earth with unlimited material. You may be slightly more than figureheads to the average US Citizen, but you’ll always be an orthopedic surgeon when it comes to my funny bone.

It’s serious fun!

9. The Blue Suited NFL Network Guy
Oh, hello! This dude made me lose my shit laughing every time he showed up on TV to promote NFL’s fantasy football apps and website. He was around for the beginning of the football season and then disappeared completely. I don’t know what happened as of this writing. Whoever you are, bearded sir, please come back. I miss you.

Also serious fun.

8. Planetside 2

Hey, folks who play Call of Duty or Battlefield 3 until your rectums die of poor circulation! Play this fucking game. It’s very similar with the ranking, leveling for perks and gizmos, and “shooting digital avatars of 12-year-olds in the face while they  hurl racial slurs at you” systems, except you have the added bonus of every single map in the game being connected in one giant overworld. You know how you can fly a plane around in Battlefield 3? You can do that in this, but you don’t have to turn back around every two seconds because the map is so small. It literally takes an eight-minute ride to get to new bases to conquer them. Also, pod-dropping your soldier onto a bunch of people’s faces from orbit is more fun than anything you’ll ever do in those silly mind-numbing treadmill cookie-cutter garbage games.

Now that I got that rant out of the way, if you play games on PC and you like shooting people in the face with futuristic weaponry, try Planetside 2 out. It’s a Massively Multiplayer First Person Shooter and it’s free to play. That means the only thing you’re going to spend on this game is hard drive space.

Thanks for making me forget what happened on my 27th birthday.

7. The Sliz
This article isn’t really about me advertising products. That’s not why I write. I don’t get kickbacks. In fact, if anyone from these companies knew I was talking about their product they’d probably stop making it. That said, buy a Sliz if you like doing shots of liquor without all the pain and suffering of doing shots of liquor. The Sliz is a cocktail glass sized-and-shaped beer bong for liquor that you pour your chaser directly on to and drink it all in one quick blast. If you absolutely, positively want to get drunk without all the difficulty of getting drunk… and you need to do it NOW? The Sliz is the way to go. Also, it makes a pretty good party conversation piece. Just don’t let my roommate Kelly pour you one, unless you want cirrhosis of the liver. You can find them at sliz.com.

Assemble, motherfuckers!

6. The Avengers

If you haven’t seen this film yet, stop reading my article and do it. I’m absolutely 100% serious. Don’t read any more. You don’t deserve your eyes falling upon the wordythings I write. I know I’ve said this in the past, so hopefully you’ve learned by now that you should just listen to me. The Avengers was possibly the best summer blockbuster superhero movie ever made. Now, you might say “But Chris! Heath Ledger! Batman!”…to which I reply “Batman isn’t a superhero. He’s just a very, very rich guy who has enough money to waste his time punching bad guys in the dick.” The Avengers was filled to the brim with action, explosions, smug grins from Robert Downey Jr., and hilarious moments that you probably heard your coworkers talking about before you got to see it and started plotting their demise.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

5. The Dark Knight Rises

Everything about this movie was great. I love Nolan’s Batman because he is human. He’s not really a superhero. It’s always more about Bruce Wayne than it is the symbol of Batman. I know a lot of people were upset with Bane’s voice, but I loved it. Catwoman was fantastic. Hans Zimmer did an incredible job with the score yet again. Another movie that you need to get ahold of immediately if you haven’t seen it. I’m sad that Nolan’s Batman films are over. Now he just needs to help work on Wolverine or something before they put another adamantium Deadpool with laser eyes into the new flick.

Boo. Stabby stabby.

4. Assassin’s Creed 3

The Assassin’s Creed series hasn’t ever really been my favorite. It’s had its moments, but usually when I play the series I get bored with it a few minutes after the world opens up to freely roam around. Not in the third (well, fifth or so) installment, however. Everything about this game is an absolute blast. The standard “parkour until your heart stops and then jump onto a baddie and stab him in the brain” is still there, but they’ve added a lot of neat features to this game and made the story a lot more engaging. If you like the idea of stabbing a virtual Redcoat in the back and then using his musket to simultaneously stab his buddy in the face and blasting him with a round through the head, then this game is for you. You fucking psychopath. Also, this time around there are fun new objectives to check out and a Naval Combat side game that is super fun. Put Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “America FUCK YEAH” on loop and go fight the revolution.

She’s even hot WITH crazy eyes.

3. Homeland

Homeland is a pretty awesome show about CIA politics and terrorism on Showtime, Sunday nights. Claire Danes and Damian Lewis star in this gritty drama. This is the only show that is going to give you a single conversation in a poorly lit room and make it more intense and intriguing than your five favorite shows combined. I’ve pretty much given up caring about Dexter at this point because of this show (my roommates are going to kill me… sorry, Jimmy and Kelly). I’m more excited every week to see what the Homeland writers have in store for us.

What’s taters, precious?

2. The Hobbit

I don’t really care too much about Lord of the Rings. That’s my girlfriend’s deal. She loves Tolkien and Peter Jackson (whom she refers to as “PJ” as if they’re best friends). But I absolutely loved the first installment of this movie. It was highly anticipated for, well, years and in my opinion it delivered. I didn’t feel like it dragged at any point and once the action started it didn’t stop. I can see how fans of the book may be frustrated, but I’ve only read it once and didn’t really care too much about reading it again.

Buy me this and I’ll mention you in a future article.

1. Lego

I may be a giant manchild, but I still love building stuff with Lego bricks. It’s not to the point of me spending all my free time finding the perfect pieces at the Lego store at the mall or anything, but I’ve spent a bit too much money on Lego kits this year. Their video games are fun little platformer adventures as well. Do yourself a favor and go buy a 50 dollar Lego brickset next time you have a bad day. You’ll feel a lot better about the world.

The Winners:
Movie:  The Avengers
Video Game:  Planetside 2
TV Show:  Homeland
Album: Violent Waves by Circa Survive (Philly-area bands are the best bands)

The Losers:
Movie: Resident Evil: Retribution. Please stop making these films. Jesus Christ. This one made even less sense than any of the ones before it, while simultaneously trying to steal plot devices from a video game that came out four years ago.
Video Game:  Call of Duty: Black Cookie Cutter Racial Slur Database Ops 2
TV Show: Two Broke Girls. Still atrocious this year, no idea why this wasn’t canceled and fans have to fight to have Community get an episode aired on time.
Album: Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday-Roman Reloaded. Seriously. Try to listen to the track Stupid Hoe for more than 60 seconds. If you do, you’ll end up looking like the dudes who saw the deadlights in Stephen King’s IT. This may be the worst album ever put together by any pop icon. In the history of music. Ever.

This is for you, Gaming magazines

The FUCK YOU award of the year goes to…..

Video Game Magazine Publishing: I don’t know why it took me so long to realize, but you’re all corporate shills. You have absolutely zero journalistic integrity and should be fucking ashamed of yourselves. I’m looking at you, IGN, Game Informer, and EGM. After reading all the articles this year where you gave high praise to the monthly/yearly garbage EA and Activision queef out, followed by an in-depth article about how you folks literally forced the makers of Fallout: New Vegas into unemployment… I hope you all fly on the same plane to a convention, the pilot escapes to safety, and you crash into a fucking mountain. We know how you’re basically just a mouthpiece for the big name companies now. Especially with the OTHER recent exposé explaining exactly how much in the way of bribes you take to give a game a good review. You are the Fox News of video game entertainment news. And from what I know about the industry, you don’t get paid well, either. Ziff Davis gets all that cash. Or whatever publishing house is in charge of your shitty, shitty rag. So why not split off and start your own gig? Lest you be forced to give yet another Android-app-turned-Xbox-Live-game two more points than you give to games that are actually well made.

Breathe, Chris. Breathe.

Ahem. So anyway. Thanks, true believers, for reading my little article here. You guys are the best. I’ll see you all in 2013!