Top 10 video games of 2011

You know, this was originally going to be a top five, but when I sat down to think about it there were just too many great games to just include five. Keep in mind, these are only the games I've played, and I tend to swing in the Sony direction. So no, I haven't played Skyward Sword; I haven't played Gears Of War 3, and I'm never going to play the Halo remake (because I've never liked Halo), so there. Also, and this might turn some heads, I will point out once again, that I don't like first person shooters. So no, no Modern Warfare 3, and no Battlefield 3 on here either. Sorry fanboys.


2011 was an amazing year for games. As the industry grows developers seem to be smartening up to what works and what doesn't. Games have been refined to a point where It's no surprise that I'm ashamed to say that all the games on my list are sequels or remakes. It just seems like the only great new game that came out in 2011 is LA Noir, and I just haven't gotten around to playing it. But enough lollygagging, let's get to it:

10- Assassin's Creed: Revelations

I'll be the first to say, this game almost didn't make this list (I just couldn't think of anything else to put on here). AC: Revelations is a good game, had Ubisoft dedicated a bit more to making it different from it's predecessor, it might have been a great game. Unfortunately, their 'one game a year' schedule for this franchise didn't seem to give them enough time to develop new ideas for such an interesting IP.



9- Pokémon Black/White Version

I can almost see the look of shock on your face, but the truth is, these games work. Pokémon has been around for a good while now, and it's going strong with it's formula gameplay and just enough innovation to keep fans coming back for more. And I'm guilty of it, and I'm not at all ashamed of it.

While a seeming lack of support after release hindered it's impact this year, B&W is a solid installment. If only we got as many 'events' as we did for the previous games it would have been much bigger. This probably meas we're getting the inevitable Gray version, probably for the 3DS  pretty soon.



8- Mortal Kombat

That's right, it's back. And to say it's back with a vengeance would be quite the understatement. Without a doubt the best fighting game in 2011, and maybe the best ever. MK has gone back to it's roots, the over the top gore will keep you koming back for more.

It also helps that it's been getting konstant support via downloadable kontent, even pleasing fans by letting us mutilate foes as Freddy Krueger.

On top of the regular Arkade version, you get tons and tons of gameplay modes that will keep you playing for months and months, and you also add the most komprehensive story mode in fighting game history. You actually get to play through the stories from the original MK all the way to MK3. They might have not intended to, but they also made the best Mortal Kombat movie that they could make.



7- inFamous 2

This is the prime example of how a sequel can vastly improve on the original. Like I said in my review, the only real thing that hinders this sequel is that whole morality system that keeps the main character kinda bland. But besides that, both sides of the story have good moments, and the side missions are enjoyable at best. It's difficult to make a sandbox game like this and keep it fresh throughout, and Sucker Punch improved everything that they needed to. Here's to hoping the eventual third installment keeps it rolling in the right direction.



6- Mass Effect 2

Yeah, this is borderline cheating, but fuck you. ME2 came out in 2010, but the definitive (PS3) version came out in June, so I win.

This game seamlessly blends a bunch of gameplay styles perfectly. I mean, there's a reason why it's one of the most acclaimed games two years straight. And the sequel might just be the most anticipated game of 2012.

From shooting segments, to RPG elements and even social interactions are dissected in a vibrant, interesting world which you get to explore at will.



5- Dead Space 2

Scary games are becoming more and more of a rarity these days. Dead Space is one of the few ones that can accomplish fear without limiting the player in certain ways. The things Isaac goes through are visceral and terrifying, yet beautiful in their gruesomeness.

In an industry where if it ain't broke don't fix it just doesn't cut it anymore, DS2 did very little to their formula; this is proof that a tweak of the mechanics, and a little spice to the story goes a hell of a long way. It also doesn't hurt that they abandoned the silent protagonist thing that so many people seem to love doing these days.


- I would like to point out that this is where this list got difficult. Out of the top four games, any one of them could have taken up the top spot.



4- Portal 2

The geniuses at Valve keep proving that games don't need to be overly complicated in order to be successful. Portal 2 is nothing short of brilliant. But it's brilliance comes from how simple it is. At it's core it's nothing more than an amazing puzzle game.

And then you add such a simple yet amazing story. On top of that it's told by nothing more than three speaking characters, one of them speaking from the grave. Yes, they do use the whole silent protagonist thing, but in this case the game is so full of banter that it doesn't really matter. Before the original Portal the concept of a puzzle game with a storyline was just about unheard of. Much less  one that makes you laugh out of fear this much.

On top of adding a second part to the story, Portal 2 adds a couple of things, but it makes them count. The simple addition of liquids to the gameplay changed everything. When something as simple as liquids have this big an impact on a game, you know someone is doing something right.

The other big addition was co-op. But this isn't a couple of co-op levels, that just wouldn't do; this is co-op done right. Getting it's own storyline, it consists of half of the game, if not more. It might not be the longest game in the world, but it's enjoyable no matter how many times you play it.


3- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Being a sequel to 2009's game of the year is quite a lot of pressure, but Uncharted 3 took it in stride and actually surpassed it in several aspects. Naughty Dog have developed quite the knack for delivering brilliantly cinematic sequences at every turn that keep you hooked into a truly tantalizing story. They're also known for outmatching every game out there in sheer production value.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of key areas where I find Among Thieves was more polished. The shooting in this third installment doesn't seem as precise or crisp this time around. This could be due to some changes in the mechanics of the game, and it's not much of an issue, it just takes some getting used to. On top of that, U2 had Zoran Lazarević, a well developed antagonist, and U3 didn't seem to have the same caliber bad guys for Drake to contend with.

Again, Drake's Deception is a spectacular game. Had it not been for my nitpicking and some stiff competition, this game could very well be game of the year as well. But I do believe that Uncharted 2 is the better game of the franchise, and that cost it.


2- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I can almost hear the dozens of you yelling at your monitors. That's right, Skyrim isn't number one. But if there ever was a close decision, this was it.

Around five hours into my Skyrim experience I openly stated that Bethesda had successfully created the quintessential RPG experience of our generation. I never thought I'd say that about a game, but there's no doubt in my mind.

I've always loved it when games bring a map along with the booklet, almost gloating that you 'might get lost' in their world. Well Skyrim does that because you will get lost multiple times. I've been playing it since launch, and there is no area inaccessible in this world, and there's so much to explore. It really can't be explained, you need to play it for yourself.

The other aspects of the game are also great. Everything is as polished as it's going to get with a game this big. Sure it has it's bugs, but that's to be expected; minor issues that should be fixed with patches before you know it.

Skyrim game is a landmark for the industry, I'm having a blast playing it and I don't plan on being done with it for a long time. But as much as I love it, as a fanboy nothing this year gave me more joy than...


1- Duke Nukem Forever
    Batman: Arkam City

I can't pick against Batman. I mean... He's Batman... The Goddamn Batman. Any person who didn't pick this as game of the year isn't a big enough Batman fan.

Like I said in my review, Arkham City has changed what a superhero based game needs to be. It set the bar as high as Nolan did for superhero movies, and it might as well might have set it higher.

The story couldn't be more perfect either. From the banter you pick off of common street thugs, to the twist and surprise appearance of well known and the most obscure of villains. Without spoiling anything, any villain could and probably is in this game. The surprises are endless. And the tiny references will keep even the most hardcore of fans marking out.

Being The Dark Knight is fun. Hovering over Gotham is fun. And you get to do it all, and feel like a total badass doing it. It's a thing of beauty. They have upped the standard for all other games, and I look forward to other companies trying to meet this new standard. If they do try, it should be a great year for games.

E3 Recap, Final Round - The Hits and the Misses, the many, many misses.

E3 is and will forever be a hit or miss type of event. There really is no "in-betweenies" in this case. You either loved or were totally let down by the event. You may like or dislike a couple of things, but by week's end you have one distinct taste in your mouth. And this year, I must reiterate, I am very disappointed.

To me, E3 is that place where you expect to be shocked by what's said. You expect the big gaming news that will pump you up for the upcoming year, if not the next couple of years.

This might sound surprising coming from me, but I blame the internet (gasp); that's right, thanks to gaming websites, and my bad habit of being informed, I already expected most of what would be said at each press conference. At least the "important" things.

We knew we were getting Nintendo's new thing, we knew we were getting info on what we now call the PSVita. And the only company that might have had an ace up their sleeve gave us diddly squat. Analysts and bloggers alike kept saying that "the star" of E3 this year might actually be the games and not the hardware, well they underdelivered too.

Reporting for *chuckle* DUTY.

So, now I'm going to divide this into groups. If you've been following you know what I thought of each company... So on this, my final run at E3 2011, it's going to be about the games. Keep in mind, I am slightly biased, I do tend to be more of a Sony guy. And on top of that, I'm not big on the fan favorite FPS genre. I think it's outdated and unimaginative... Like Michael Bay movies. Yeah, I went there.

So, without further shit talking, here we go:


The Hits:

- Bioshock Infinite kicked all sorts of ass this year. I know plenty of people who absolutely adore the first Bioshock, and everyone of them said that the second seemed rushed and unfinished. It also seems that the devs have heard this more than once, so they seem to be working their asses off on this game, and it shows.

The demo, the cutscenes, the writing - they all seem to be on point for this one.

- If you haven't seen video from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim hold on to your jaw before you press play to avoid damaging your computer or yourself.

It's hard for me to get this excited about an RPG, but in this case I can't help myself. It just has such a huge feel to it that I just can't wait to play it.

- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception keeps upping the bar every time it show anything. At E3 we saw a whole new level, and I'm confident that it's the tip of the iceberg.

I'm pretty sure Naughty Dog could keep teasing us 'till November and the game would still feel fresh at release.


The Misses:

- Let the hate rain. Modern Warfare 3 was a huge miss. This is supposed to be the king of games this year. And it showed next to nothing new. It looks just like Black Ops. Seriously, Activision is going to have to do a lot more than change up the scenery to pump me up.

It just showed how stale the genre is.

- Battlefield 3 just missed it's moment. The game does look beautiful. But their demo was like watching paint dry. The tank sequence went way too long, and it just doesn't look like fun. EA seems to have beaten Activision to that line that sits between 'game' and 'simulator' and that might not be a good thing for them. I expect to see more, but for now, this is a downer.

- This one is getting the brunt of my heat because it's not one, but two games that didn't show at all. I'm not a big Halo fan to begin with. But I will admit it's Microsoft's golden goose... And an absent one at that.

MS needed that gameplay footage from one of the two games to get themselves over, yet they failed at it and in my eyes, it cost them.

Games I wanted to see more of:

- Twisted Metal was the big surprise last year at the Sony conference. This year, it was barely mentioned. Why? Talk about a letdown. After a year of close to silence, we got some gameplay on a tiny screen in a little room, and I for one am not satisfied.

My sweet tooth for Sweet Tooth must be fed.

- It saddens me that Gears of War always plays second fiddle to Halo. I prefer Gears. I really do. It's the one Xbox exclusive that I really enjoy. And it saddens me that it gets such a lackluster push right before launch.

I would have been happy with less Kinect and more Gears.





Games that no-showed that I wanted to see:

- Call it Borderlands 2, call it Borderworlds, call it whatever... I want to see it, I want to play it, and it just wasn't there.

I know Gearbox was still prepping for Duke, but dammit give me something!

- This game has been talked about forever now, and still we know little to nothing about it. The Last Guardian still lingers in shadows, and we'll have to keep waiting to see what it's all about. Miraculously, for a game to which we know so little, it has us all chomping at the bits for any info.




In closing, I need to repeat, the problem with this year's E3 was the lack of shock value. Aside from the mention of a new Smash Bros nothing made me really excited. A new Metal Gear would have been nice, maybe more info on the new God of War... But I'm going to quit bitching and moaning and finally announce the end to my E3 coverage for this year. I will now go back to writing stuff people might actually read (I sincerely hope Ray isn't the only one to read this shit, he did request it).

E3 Recap Part 2 - Sony says they're sorry.

"Umm, whoops?"

Even before E3 started, Sony seemed to be cemented in the second or third place spot. Nintendo had the announcement of a new console, and Microsoft recently stated that the next Xbox is in the beginning stages of development. So it did seem like Sony, being the only one without a rumored hardware announcement, was dependent on that the competition would do to see where it would land in the 'rankings.'

On top of that, they've fucked up big this year. The Playstation Network was down for almost two months, account information was compromised, and no one but Sony is to blame. They messed up bad. So for the first time in as long as I can remember, an E3 presentation was almost as much about "Sorry," than, "Hey, look at this cool shit."

"Did we mention, we're sorry?"

In my opinion, they also addressed this situation in the wrong way. Sony President Jack Tretton was not the man to talk about this. He did do a good job with what he had. He apologized, and then began to gloat about the apparent glorious return of the PSN.

The 'Welcome Back' gifts that Sony is giving us are almost decent at best. Don't get me wrong, there are some good games in there, but that's exactly the problem. Most gamers I know already own, played, finished and maybe even 'platinumed' half the games on the list of freebies. And I don't even know a PSP owner who hasn't hacked it and is getting the games for free. So aside from a month of PSPlus, we're not getting much.

I really do think Kevin Butler should have addressed the PSN situation, shed some humor on it all. I mean he didn't even make an appearance after he arguably stole the show last year. I'm just surprised that the marketing geniuses at Sony didn't think that humor was the answer to their situation. A heartfelt apology isn't really up the gaming community's ally. We are a group known for being cold and heartless, but we can appreciate a good laugh. And that's what KB does for us, I'm just saddened that he wasn't there.

VP of apologies

Now onto what really mattered... Around six months ago Sony announced what the called the NGP or Next Generation Portable. Doesn't really roll off the tongue as easily as Wii U now does it (hooray sarcasm). Everyone was expecting a spectacular showing from the much anticipated successor to the PSP.

I can't wait to hac... I didn't say anything.

That's not exactly what we got. What did we get?

A name: PSVita (much better)

A price: $249 - Wi-Fi     $299 - 3G/Wi-Fi (not too bad)

And really that was about it.

Ok, we got some gameplay footage of Uncharted: Golden Abyss which looks beautiful for a handheld, we got confirmation that Street Fighter x Tekken is going to be on it, and that Cole form inFamous will be a playable character. Everything else they showed on this powerhouse of a handheld seemed like a waste of time. I remember saying the same thing when the PSP launched. It was just a handful of decent titles followed by a hailstorm of crap, and it's been that way for the PSP every year since then. So for now, I'm not excited for the PSVita, they need to show me more.

To me, the most interesting of Sony's announcements (and the overall theme of E3) is the interconnection between the handheld and the home console. Sony announced bland looking action RPG titled Ruin. Honestly the game doesn't look like much, but it is completely transferable between the PS3 and the PSV, similar to what Nintendo is doing between the Wii U, the Wii U controller, and the 3DS (confusing).

Also adding fuel to this fire is the fact that Konami announced last week that they would be releasing a Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, containing MGS2, MGS3, and both MGS PSP titles. Again, the interesting thing here was revealed to be that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker had a function where your save could be transferred back and forth from your PS3 to your PSP (not PSV). Which leads to my hope that Konami will backtrack and opt for PSV connections with the entire collection instead of the one game. Also announced along with MGS is a Zone Of The Enders pack, and I should mention that both collections will also be on the Xbox 360 (minus the handheld stuff of course).

The whole HD collection, and PSP upgrade seems to be the path Sony's headed down lately. Along with MGS and ZoE we'll be getting a God Of War Origins pack with both PSP games, and the much anticipated up-scaling of the Ico and Shadow of The Colossus.

We also got a shitstorm of 3D an Move junk that really feels like a rehash of last year's press conference. I'm going to leave it at that on this subject. Blah.

PS3 titles had a much smaller role that I expected. We got new looks at Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Resistance 3, inFamous 2, and Bioshock Infinite, to name a few. But nothing really surprising here. I see no point in showcasing inFamous because the damn thing comes out this week. We've seen as much about that thing as we need to. The other games look great, especially Bioshock which looks to be as good as the first one.

And I do believe that was the big problem of the Sony press conference. There was no real shock to it at all. They were going through the motions. At least last year we got the big Twisted Metal reveal. But this year we got everything we expected and not much more.

When it comes to 'winning' E3, Sony isn't far behind Nintendo. But with the announcement of a game as huge as a new Smash Bros, the 'big N' just trumps anything Sony threw at us.

If we had only gotten Kevin Butler.

E3 Recap Part 1 - Nintendo takes the Gold - Still meh

And that's why were replacing it.

Another year, another E3. For months gamers speculate what will be said at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. And every year some people leave totally hyped, and some feel like they've been let down. And for the second straight year, I'm very much leaning to the latter of the two.

Lets start off this recap with what made the real waves:

... We knew what was coming.

And you thought 'Wii' was a silly name; this year at E3, Nintendo unveiled their next console, the Wii U. Wow, that might be the worse name for a console ever. I can hear it now: trying to walk around the local Gamestop with children just yelling out "WIIU WIIU WIIU WIIU WIIU!" like a broken siren or a bad Kung Pow imitation.

"WIIU WIIU WIIU WIIU WII!"

Wii-U?

The concept itself is interesting, even if they left it's info as vague as possible. They never brought up how powerful it was, and never even showed any real games for the system. Sure, there were some impressive looking tech demos, but after all the hype surrounding a system that has had four or five code names already, not only did they settle on the silliest option, but they just left us with promises and trailers of recycled games.

The only thing we really know about the Wii U is the controller. It looks like a rather large handheld device. Almost like a tablet PC, with buttons. Apparently it has everything imaginable on it: camera, speakers, mic (sounds like a DSi to me). On top of that the screen is obviously pretty high def, and it's (of course) a touch screen.

To their credit, Nintendo isn't one to make empty promises. Without a doubt, their biggest announcement didn't have a trailer or even an image. Apparently a new Smash Brothers game is in pre-development and it will be playable on both the 3DS and the Wii U, a technique that Sony is also kind of implementing (more on that later).

Looks like Zelda is getting screwed over again.

Rumors were that this new Nintendo console would me more powerful than the PS3. But that was left to be seen at this presentation. The Wii U was underwhelming because of how early in development it seems to be. The true star of Nintendo's press conference was the 3DS.

The 3DS has been a brutal failure up until now. With a weak game roster at launch it was the most hyped flop in recent gaming history. But at E3, Nintendo came to play with a huge list of games that are headed to the handheld. By this holiday season, the 3DS is looking at a pretty stacked roster of first party Nintendo games like Super Mario, Mario Kart, Star Fox, and Kid Icarus to name a few.

The other big news from the 'big N' is that they're finally addressing their lack of third party support for their systems. For years, Nintendo has relied primarily (and secondarily) on their first party titles, leaving their consumers with just a handful of quality titles to look forward to each year. Of course they would get third party games, but the norm was that these games would have Xbox 360 and PS3 counterparts that would be superior not only in the graphics department, but in the gameplay department as well.

We can't confirm that the gameplay issues are being addressed, but in the few clips we did see at E3, it does seem like Nintendo has caught up graphically for the time being. I say it like that, because I do expect both competing companies to announce new consoles in the next two years, once again leaving Nintendo in the dust in the sheer power department. But for now, Nintendo can rejoice.

Nintendo did "win" E3 this year. But it wasn't much of a landslide victory like most predicted. If it wasn't for all the first party titles for the 3DS I would almost give the nod to Sony. The Wii U underdelivered for now, but I expect big announcements for it in the coming year.