This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. 2012 may not be remembered as a fantastic year for pure western role-playing games (especially without a Skyrim to sweep the end-of-year awards) but it's been a great year for me as a video game fan. Why? Because many of the "best games of the year" may not be RPGs, but they've adapted some of the best components of RPGs to become stronger games.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown, for example, is one of the best-received games of 2012, due in part to its use of RPG mechanics. Tactics games are often associated with RPGs (especially Japanese-style tactics games) but the connection isn't always so concrete with "western" games. For example, I don't really qualify the original X-COM: UFO Defense as an RPG, due to its too-large squads filled with personality-free squaddies, whereas Jagged Alliance 2 certainly fit the mold.

XCOM tweaks the initial game's form in ways that align with traditional role-playing games. The squad size is limited to 4-6 characters, traditional RPG numbers, and only having one base means you rarely need large numbers of squaddies - I never had more than 15 at once, and even that was high due to playing on "Classic" difficulty. It also slightly decreases the importance of the strategic decision-making level, putting the focus on the characters in the field.