The winner of Destructoid’s best shooter of 2012

Best of 2012

Love them or hate them, shooters are one of the biggest sellers in the videogame industry. Despite the saturation of shooting games, 2012 saw a number of them that sought out to offer actual interesting stories. Plus, a number of them looked at giving players more features than what we’ve grown accustomed to from past iterations.

As a reminder, here are our nominees for best shooter of 2012:

• Borderlands 2
  
• Spec Ops: The Line
  
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
  
• Far Cry 3
  
• Halo 4

And the winner is …

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Developer Treyarch blew away expectations and raised the bar on what it means to be a Call of Duty game. Literally every staple mode was overhauled in some way, on top of completely new features that were introduced.  

Single-player saw improvements all around, most notably with the player choices that can be made that determine which of the handful of endings you will experience. Multiplayer now let’s player have full control over exactly what loadout they can bring into battle, even going so far as letting players just start with a knife.

Zombies has been made into a fully fleshed out mode, the new Strikeforce missions brings in some tower defense elements, and the ability to livestream and shoutcast multiplayer matches straight from within the game shows that Treyarch is a strong player in the eSports field.