Last year was supposed to be the year I got a beast of a PC set up in my tiny apartment. It didn't end up being that year. 2013 will be, though, PC gods willing.

So even though I missed out on games that looked right up my alley—like Hotline Miami or Natural Selection 2 (which I've actually played a little bit of and loved)—I still found plenty to play that kept me more than happily occupied. These are my favorite games of 2012, in no particular order.

Borderlands 2

The game with psychotic personalities and more weapons than I could ever dream of. I loved the first Borderlands. It was the perfect cooperative game. Borderlands 2 took everything that first title made great—loot and silliness—and added even better writing, better characters, and more creative weapons. And on top of all that, Gearbox has been busting their butts to deliver us timely DLC that keeps on delivering. It's one of the few games that has come out this year that I keep going back to.

Sleeping Dogs

Virtual tourism at its best. Exploring the open world of Hong Kong was not only gorgeous, but it was also full of life that gave a real depth to the game. The story kept me compelled, driving (and perhaps more so, hijacking other cars to drive) felt wonderful, and the hand-to-hand combat is some of the best I've experienced.

The Walking Dead

I've talked this one to death, especially considering it's my personal nomination for Game of the Year. Suffice it to say that it was the most emotional game I played through this year, with some really powerful characters and, more importantly, relationships. This game can teach you something about yourself.

Mark of the Ninja

I only go half-stealthy in most stealth games. Mainly because most stealth games let you get away with doing so. But Mark of the Ninja's practically perfect design puts stealth at the forefront, making it not only manageable and comfortable to play stealthily throughout the entire game, but also incredibly fun to a degree that feels rewarding.

Journey

Journey is an adorable game. It makes you want to reach out to someone, help them and rely on them for help. Journey teaches you that you don't need words to communicate with people, and that encouraged people to work together to survive. And that ending? That ending was almost unbearably heartwarming. Even if it was somewhat somber for me, when I'd lost my companion just when we'd reached safety after everything we had been through together. In a way I almost preferred that ending, because it reinforced what Journey showed me: that cooperation is a beautiful thing.

Fez

I'm a puzzle person. Fez is an all at once a smart and terribly confusing puzzle game. So much so that the Internet had to come together to compare notes to solve some of the game's tougher puzzles. And beyond that, there were even more secrets to uncover. A challenging puzzle game would normally be enough for me. But the bright and pretty colors and an adorably pudgy Fez made this puzzle game an absolute joy to play through, too.

Halo 4

Being a dedicated fan of Bungie's Halo, I was a little nervous for Halo 4, the first title to be developed instead by 343. But the second I hopped in and started killing the Covies with my battle rifle, I felt at ease. And then 343 pulled a fast one on me and turned the singleplayer story into something of a romance, and a personal story of what it takes to be Master Chief. Even after the campaign is over—and after you've played it through on multiple difficulty levels, cause c'mon—there's plenty of fun times to be had in multiplayer. I must have played thousands of rounds of Flood and Oddball and straight Team Slayer.

Far Cry 3

It took me a while to finally find the time to get around to playing this one, but once I sunk a few hours in I was hooked. I love driving around the island, pulling over quickly because I spotted a tiger whose skin I really need before continuing on to my mission. I even love scaling those radio towers, including the more frustrating ones that took me a few day/night cycles to complete. But my favorite parts of Far Cry 3—something I wish the game had more of—were the trippy scenes Jason experienced after lots of drug and whatever liquid taking. Scenery morphed, he battled weird enemies, and he faced his fears. I wasn't too sold on the strength of the storyline otherwise. Some average tourist all of a sudden turning into a badass assassin and being welcomed into tribes of warriors who inexplicably can't do anything on their own? Well thank god Jason came along, eh? It felt a little too unbelievable. But I accepted the storyline. Because the game—or perhaps really my skills with using the tools and tatau given to me that helped me wipe out entire camps of soldiers—convinced me just fine otherwise.

Jumping Finn Turbo

Here's my "wtf" entry. Jumping Finn Turbo is an iOS game. I rarely love mobile games. I enjoy some, but I'll toss them aside almost as easily as I pick them up. Super Hexagon is one that came close, but nothing kept my attention like Jumping Finn Turbo. Maybe it's the Adventure Time hook that got me. Or maybe it was the competition to beat high scores (try to beat mine!) and reach the actual "end" of the game. Ultimately? I think it was how simple and yet addictive the game was. Addictive because you knew if you pushed on just a little farther, you could unlock that next ability. Get to that next level that once felt so far away but is now in your reachable grasp. And yet, like most mobile games that come my way, I don't play this one anymore. But I played it longer than most others.

The Darkness II

Remember: this game came out in 2012! I'm a blood and gore kind of girl. The more guts I get to spill the merrier, I say. The Darkness II fed into my taste perfectly, and supplied me with two extra arms to multiply the effect. I absolutely loved multitasking between ripping enemy spines out and shooting other people in the head. I've killed a lot of virtual bad guys in my time, but rarely have I done so with such eviscerating enthusiasm as The Darkness II allows.

2012 was a banner year for stealth games. From January up through December, we got to play a healthy variety of games involving dozens of different types of sneaking, skulking, lurking, and sklurking. (It's a thing.)

You could say that these games… crept up on us.

We really… didn't see them coming.

Jason and I have already talked at length about why we love stealth games. While many video games set a series of systems in motion and toss you into the middle, stealth games operate a bit differently. They're about staying outside of those systems, creeping about the periphery while poking here, prodding there, and deciding how to engage. You really play with stealth games, and that's what lends them their unique rhythm and makes them so satisfying.

It's also why we come away from stealth games with such great stories. Every stealth game I played this year, I came away with a handful of stories, moments that captured the best (and sometimes, worst) sorts of stealth-game unpredictability.

Rather than just run down all the stealth games that came out this year, I thought it might be fun to share some stories, then open the floor for y'all to share your own tales. Here goes:

Mark of the Ninja

Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja was interesting because it was both a tight, polished stealth game, and something of a treatise on stealth games themselves. Helped along by its two-dimensional design, the game gave clear visual feedback for every aspect of sneaking—footstep audio burst visually outward from the protagonist, while lights illuminated exactly where they were pointing. There was never a question whether you were hidden or visible, and the enemy artificial intelligence clearly signaled its status and intent. My moment from MotN comes from early in the game, when I was tasked with sneaking through a building and freeing several of my captured compatriots. I decided I was going to do the entire bit nonlethal, and that was where I discovered the most rewarding way to play Mark of the Ninja: Without killing anyone at all. As I freed the final captive without being spotted, I felt the kind of satisfaction I rarely feel by playing nonviolent in sneaking games.

Journey

No, seriously: There were so many stealth games in 2012 that even Journey had a stealth segment. This marks what I think of as the "low point" of the protagonist, the darkest, tensest hour. As the robed wanderer fights its way across a snowy field, it is hunted by those terrifying flying fish-golem monsters. I've rarely felt such unexpected dread, and even replaying the game, I fear this section.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

I don't think I felt more uneasy about stealth than I did in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. As I mentioned in my review, the game is at its best when you're pulling off carefully orchestrated stealth-kills with your entire team, slipping through an area undetected. But no game has made me feel as uncomfortable. Particularly during the early Africa levels, as my stealth-cloak enabled cybersoldier squad wiped out wave after wave of ill-equipped third-world junta soldiers, it became clearer and clearer that this battle was horribly uneven. So, it's not so much an emergent stealth moment that I remember, more a feeling of how totally overpowered my team and I were.

Dishonored

It is very difficult to pick a single stealth moment from Dishonored, a game in which I've forgotten more classic moments than I experience in most games. But one comes to mind: In the mission in the Golden Cat brothel, you're tasked with taking down a couple of n'er do-wells located at various points throughout the building. One of them is holed up behind closed doors near to a body of water, and there are a number of ways I could sneak in to get him. But the way I chose was a doozy: I possessed a fish, swam through a small passage and into the room, then slowed down time and burst from the water in slow-mo before stabbing the dude in the neck. It was one of those moments that you see in movies, and yet I got to do it myself. In real time. Pretty much my Ultimate Dishonored Moment.

Hitman: Absolution

Here's a game I liked more than some, but I'm still playing it to this day, and still enjoying it quite a bit. If there's one thing I retrospectively could have talked about more in my review, it's how Absolution does feel different from Blood Money in many of its levels—it's much more of a traditional stealth game than its most recent predecessor. That said, there were still so many times when I felt that old Hitman groove—particularly during the mission "Shaving Lenny." Outside of Lenny's BBQ, I snuck over to a storage shed and took out the guard inside, before slowly but surely taking down guard after guard, and returning to the shed to stash them all. Over the course of the next twenty or so minutes, that shed became my macabre base of operations, the place NPCs went to decompose.

Assassin's Creed III

This game is the one to get a mention due to bad stealth. Perhaps chief among the many ways Assassin's Creed III disappointed me was the fact that the game's stealth was, for lack of a better word, busted. Two memories stick with me, and both involve bushes. The first involved failing the George Washington eavesdropping mission for the umpteenth time, entirely because for some unknown reason, Connor stood up for a moment while prowling in the bushes. The second involved taking out Pitcairn during the Battle of Bunker Hill. The infuriating thing about bushes in the game is that the moment you've been spotted, you simply can't crouch down again. The game ejects you from cover, and you have to find another way. This works okay in some sequences, but is a disaster in others, particularly if detection means failing the mission. The sneaking bits were tense, but for the wrong reasons. I wasn't worried I'd get spotted, I was worried Connor would do something dumb of his own accord and fail the mission for me.

Far Cry 3

More than perhaps every other game on this list, Far Cry 3 is a game that inspires stealth stories. I have a bunch: The time I lurked outside an outpost, luring dudes away one by one using pebbles, in an attempt to get my second no-alert outpost clearing, only to fuck it up at the last minute and get spotted by a roving patrol, have them trigger the alarm, and get killed. Or another time, when I shot the lock off of a tiger cage and had it immediately charge straight for me (and shortly afterward, managed to get a bear to clear out an entire outpost for me). Or the time, as I shared at the start of my review, when I hang-glided in behind enemies and snuck in to take them down, only to have everything go wonderfully wrong. Far Cry 3 was, as much if not more than Dishonored, a stealth game that was at its best when things went awry.

Those were my most memorable moments of sneaking in 2012. What were yours?

Video games are more than lasers and explosions, rules and design, music and graphics. They require input, and so they require controls. But human interface can be a dicy thing—so tough to get right, so easy to screw up.

The games of 2012 have given us some fantastic new control schemes, interesting and satisfying ways to push and pull our way around their digital worlds. Here, we'll take a look back at the best of them.

This list isn't complete—we're hoping to hear from you guys about controls you liked (or disliked) this year. But here are some standouts:

Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs may have mostly been a Grand Theft Auto clone, but it brought a number of cool twists to Rockstar's formula, particularly in how it controlled. Chase sequences played out in a neat quasi-parkour style that kept things moving while forcing players to react to the constantly changing environment. Fighting was an enjoyable take on the Arkham City formula, slower-paced and more strategic, and a great deal of fun once you mastered it. And while the driving didn't quite feel as good as some other open-world games, a number of control options made welcome changes. You could easily lean out of the window and hijack other vehicles in motion, and the ability to press a button to veer into your pursuers was one of those things I didn't know I wanted until I had it.

Halo 4

Sometimes, all you have to do to do things right is keep things the same. 343 Industries had a tough row to hoe with Halo 4, and yet the best thing that can be said of the game's controls is that it still feels like Halo. But that's not faint praise: Halo has a wonderful, smooth feel on a console controller, and the new game matches the fluidity and bounce of its predecessors.

Pid

Evan Narcisse: The first thing you'll notice about Might & Delight's platformer is how pretty it looks. But it's also got one of the most fun traversal options in any game this year. Early on in the game, Pid's hero Kurt gets bonded with an elemental energy called the Beam, which pushes him along certain vectors in the world. It's the kind of mechanic that recalls the teleporting of Portal or the grappling of Bionic Commando but updated in a sharp, modern way. Players can use the Beam on objects or enemies, too, and Pid's design throw lots of wicked physics-puzzle challenges that will force you to use the special ability creatively. It's a fresh idea that will stay in your brain long after the game is finished.

Dishonored

Not only did Dishonored feel very good to play, it featured what might be the best single new mechanic of 2012: Blink. With the press of a button, players could warp all over the map, making the game's first-person stealth and platforming seriously fun. Crucially, Blink didn't cost you blue energy unless you used it too quickly, so you could blink around the levels to your heart's content. Warping from a roof to a street-level hidey hole, then up behind a guard, then back to the roof, was one of 2012's great gaming maneuvers. And blinking from combat to appear behind your assailant was the sort of advanced maneuver that held up time and again. Blink, we salute you.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13

Owen Good: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 remade its analog stick swing this year, incorporating draw and fade (i.e. stick direction) into the swing. Working around the green takes some getting used to but it introduced some overdue determinism and challenge in your tee shots and irons.

The game also, in a title update, incorporated the option of swinging into the screen when using Kinect. Before, you had to stand parallel to the screen (so that you were looking at something other than the screen when you completed your swing.)

ZombiU

Ubisoft's Wii U launch title ZombiU wasn't easy to play—it was claustrophobic and disempowering. But that was the point—the game was a punishing, tense crawl through horribly dangerous, zombie-strewn city streets and claustrophobic interiors. Not only was it a smart, interesting horror game on its own, it integrated the Wii U's second-screen gamepad in smart ways, forcing the player to look down to pick locks and root through their backpack, often at the worst times. Via the gamepad, ZombiU conjured the panic of a zombie attack better than perhaps any game before it, and showed that in the right hands, the Wii U's big new idea can feel very big and very new, indeed.

Mark of the Ninja

Rare is the 2D platformer that feels as fleet and empowering as Mark of the Ninja. Your black-clad protagonist flitted and leapt about with the grace of a cat, sticking to walls and dropping into the shadows like a deadly arrow. While some of the prompts could get tangled in close quarters, Mark of the Ninja's predatory sense of movement made it a joy to play.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

It's no easy feat, making a driving game work well on a game controller. But Need For Speed: Most Wanted nails it, giving players enough control to feel in charge but keeping things simple enough that the game was always approachable. Criteron has mastered the "arcade racing" sweet spot, and their game is a blast as a result.

Far Cry 3

The first thing I asked the developers of Far Cry 3 when I saw them at E3 was, "Did you guys keep the slide?" The slide in Far Cry 2 is one of my all-time favorite video game moves, and with good reason—it just feels good to sprint across a field and slide into cover. What they didn't mention, and what I found when I eventually played the game, was that they'd added all manner of other ingenious moves to make Far Cry 3 a remarkably responsive, satisfying first-person shooter. In particular, the "soft cover" mechanic is brilliant and works well—slide up to cover and Jason will automatically pull up against it; aim your weapon and he'll pop out. The unlockable takedowns are a great deal of fun, too, particularly the knife-throwing one. Far Cry 3 is a wonderfully empowering game, and the well-implemented controls are a big part of why.

Those are some control schemes and mechanics that we really liked in 2012. How about you? Tell us about the controls you really liked (or if you like, the ones you really hated) in the comments.