Captain Nemo
Member
1. Portal 2
2. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
3. Uncharted 3
2. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
3. Uncharted 3
Kabouter said:I demand request you do a three paragraph+ write-up of why Homefront is amazing.
Stump, have you played Rayman Origins yet?
Official Vote
1. Hamilton's Great Adventure
2. Adventures of Shuggy
3. Bastion
4. You Don't Know Jack
5. Tiny Tower
6. Stacking
7. Bulletstorm
8. Portal 2
9. ilomilo
10. Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
My 2010 game of the year-in-2011 was Deadly Premonition.
I'll be doing a two-part post. My actual vote will come at the end of the second post.
As always an interesting read, you have such unique tastes.
I'm curious have you played Pullbox/Pushmo and what are your thoughts on it?
I'd love to hear what you thought of Tintin. The local multiplayer looked fun in videos I've seen, but the main game is apparently short? Is it closer to the movie, or does it throw in a few references to the original comic at all?I'd also love for anyone who reads this and thinks I've said something wrong, right, or interesting to reply. I finished about 75 games in 2011, many of which were 2011 releases, so if you're wondering what I thought of Shadows of the Damned, Tintin, Arkham City, Duke Nukem Forever, Red Faction Armageddon, Homefront, Resistance 3, or any other games, just ask.
I'd love to hear what you thought of Tintin. The local multiplayer looked fun in videos I've seen, but the main game is apparently short? Is it closer to the movie, or does it throw in a few references to the original comic at all?
Also, uh, any option for French voiceover?
Also please tell me you bought Solatorobo and El Shaddai, they both price collapsed to the levels I think we both always get games at.
Great posts, stump. And thanks to everyone who is putting in the time to explain their choices. Just like last year, I've read every post in the thread and it's extremely enjoyable to do so.
I had to uninstall tiny Towers from my Galaxy Nexus because it was taking away my life5. Tiny Tower (iOS)
This was a tough choice for me. Tiny Tower isn't strictly speaking a game. You might hear the name and look at the screen and think that maybe it's a tower building simulation like SimTower. It's not. There's no game here. You can't win, you can't lose, there's no strategy, you simply need to invest more and more time to progress further.
In Tiny Tower, you build a tower. Each floor costs money to build. Once a floor is built, you can put either a business (one of five types) or an apartment in it. Building businesses and apartments are free. Apartments can hold up to five Bitizens. Each Bitizen has a dream job, and performance stats for each of the five business types. You choose a business type and get a random business--when you pick food you might get Mexican or a Burger Joint or Vegan Food or many other choices. Each business can hold up to three employees. The first employee allows you to sell the lowest quality, lowest cost, lowest value item. The second the second item. The third the highest value item. More skilled employees give you more of a discount on items. Dream Job employees stock up double the quantity of the item. Sales proceed automatically and there's nothing you can do to speed them up. When you run out of stock, you restock. If a business runs out of all its stock, it closes until it gets new stock.
So what you do is busywork. Restock. Got enough coins. Build a new floor. Build a new type of business. Build apartments to put people in the business. Day in, day out. You can play as little as about 10 minutes a day or as much as hours and hours a day, but it will take you 2-3 months to get your tower into the stratosphere. You can dress up Bitizens, repaint or rename businesses, evict underperforming Bitizens, read what Bitizens post on "Bitbook" (this is hilarious, just FYI), upgrade your elevator. All of this is nothing. It's not strategy, it's not skill, it's just a time sync.
It seems like I'm being negative here. Why Tiny Tower made my list is the wonderful job they'd made wasting your time fun. Bitizens have costumes and clothing and their own little personalities thanks to Bitbook. The game scratches the min-max itch very well with constant opportunities to optimize your efficiency, even if it's all irrelevant and even the shittiest employee choices will lead to success. Finding out which business you get has a Gashapon style "What am I gonna get this time?" feeling. You play Tiny Tower, and then you want to play more Tiny Tower. The game doesn't have any gross IAP model (in-app purchasing is useless after about your first week and not super useful before then) or friend-spamming. It's just a really feel good game. The presentation is gorgeous, the game has received many updates. It's just a good way to kill time. It's not a game, but it's my #5 game of the year.
Tiny Tower is free, and it's also available on Android but I understand the Android port is totally poop
Oh my, I wasn't expecting such a wonderful, detailed response. Thank you.wonderful response, including:
The high point of the game is the awesome animation which very much evokes the comics and the HBO Cartoon. When enemies slip on a banana peel, they slip and trip and wobble, and spin before falling, stars spinning around their head. When you die, you get a funny animated KOed sequence. Enemies fall ass-above-face all the time. Sound effects are a laugh riot. Haddock is even more babbly in the game than in the comics. "Vegetarian" was probably his funniest insult, but all the traditional ones like bashi-bazouk are in there.
D'aww... well, it's directed more to kids. Crazy Haddock must be just as good as Drunk Haddock. Merely keeping bashi-bazouk in there makes me chuckle.The captain is merely crazy, not a drunk, and there's no booze in the game.
That's why I asked. The original books helped me with French reading/listening comprehension when I was younger; thus, for anything associated with Tintin, French is preferred. I expect my boyfriend (ie: the person I plan on playing the co-op with) to feel the same way about it, since his French is better than mine. I don't really mind playing it in English, though.Unfortunately I co-oped it with my bum monolingual girlfriend. I am bilingual and read Tintin in French so I would have rather played it in French. The game packaging does say "game in English and French", so I assume it's at least bilingual. I am Canadian so I'm not sure if the US SKU is any different. Kabouter (who is Dutch) played the game, you might ask him.
Wow. Well then, if I am guaranteed at least ONE reader of my babble, I guess I will bother.
Given that they went to the trouble of fully localizing it in a language as minor as Dutch, doing the best localization job into Dutch I've ever seen, I'm pretty sure they'll have done the same for French.Unfortunately I co-oped it with my bum monolingual girlfriend. I am bilingual and read Tintin in French so I would have rather played it in French. The game packaging does say "game in English and French", so I assume it's at least bilingual. I am Canadian so I'm not sure if the US SKU is any different. Kabouter (who is Dutch) played the game, you might ask him.
The timeline was a bit much for me, I mean, so much of it hinges on South Korea suddenly accepting annexation by North Korea. Regardless of leader charisma, and replacement fat Kim Jong Un in Homefront has none, that would never, ever happen. It just feels like everything got a lot of attention when it came to the timeline, like financial troubles, the Saudi-Iran war etc. but they just sort of passed over the whole peaceful annexation deal. I mean, regardless of how ridiculous it would still have been, it would have been nice to see them think up a proper reason for such an event.My girlfriend is a chronic napper and whenever we actually make plans, she normally drinks Full Throttle to stay awake. So the product placement was for a product I can relate to, I guess.
I liked the initial intro where you were driving through the city, even though it was a bit lame that your mute character apparently had no input on the whole situation. I also didn't dislike the sniper section. The initial climb of the Golden Gate bridge was kind of nifty.
As aware as I am that the plot of Homefront is implausible, I liked the rather detailed timeline they set up through the collectible newspapers you could find during the levels. It showed that they didn't just say "Okay imagine North Korea takes over the world", they actually sort of figured out how they thought it'd happen. I just went to a lecture about democratization efforts in post-conflict or failed states and the group exercise at the end was determining what the first 7 days would look like in a post-Kim DPRK. I was strangely the only person to point out that food distribution would be the first task before anything else. Food distribution was also the first thing the Americans did in their occupation of Japan. I thought of Homefront during the lecture because the exercise's premise (that KJ Un would kick it and the country would open up) was as silly as Homefront's, but at least the person presenting the lecture accepted that it was silly while I'm not sure Kaos ever did.
I played it in one sitting, so thank heavens for small mercies.
Nice list.List