Curses.
Back by popular demand (one dude)!
SHIT!!! WILL EDIT LATER (PROBABLY NOT)!
Soundtracks Soundtracks Soundtracks EVERYTHING has a great soundtrack
THE YEAR OF THE SOUNDTRACK
2010. Vanquish ; Teehee, I forgot all about the 2010 vote the first time through. I love Vanquish like you love life.
x. Skyward Sword ; This game sits in my Wii and I almost forgot about that it was even there. I've played for four hours and was so bored I couldn't go back to it. I think Ocarina is one of the best five games ever made, I loved Majora, I loved Wind Waker, maybe I'll love this once I keep going. But I'm not getting my hopes up. If I'm this bored and frustrated already, to the point I forgot the game even existed, how is it going to make my list? But, it's Zelda. I'll try for a few more hours.
x. Catherine ; I want to just acknowledge this game for being something different. I feel if I gave it another shot I might like it more, but I can't force myself to give it points when I was so sick of moving those damn blocks and with how the story really fell flat for me at the halfway point. Watching those Catherine tournaments makes me think this game might win me over if I tried again. Probably not.
10. Saints Row: The Third ; Barely making my list, I appreciate Saints Row for the little things: sometimes smart, sometimes dumb humor; great use of music, both licensed and not; surprisingly interesting characters and narrative; and one of the best upgrade systems in years. The basic mechanics of the upgrade system isn't anything revolutionary, but the balance in its craziness is what made Saints Row's upgrades special. The perks and bonuses were impeccably well-paced, as were the player's abilities and power-ups. You'd think that the fact that you could become nearly invincible and unstoppable at the end of the game would mean the game was broken. You'd be wrong.
9. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron ; The reasons this game is on my list is very simple. I like new, gutsy IPs. I love vibrant, colorful, beautiful art. I like good music. I like people taking a chance with themes and settings that aren't targeted to sell copies. El Shaddai started to run cold for me at the halfway point, and I never did finish it due to its poor story-telling, bad boss battles, (eventually) boring combat, horrific character designs, and some shitty levels. I didn't know if it would make my list, but as I sit down now and look back at the year I remember just how awestruck I was in the game's initial moments, hell, even its first reveal. When developers take a chance to try to make something special, as long as it isn't a total failure, I am immediately interested, at the very least.
8. Rayman Origins ; Even though I like this game be warned; this is probably the most overrated game-by-GAF all year that isn't a certain Nordic-trail-walking simulator whose real name I won't mention out of a terrible fear it may somehow accidentally get one extra point (not that it needs it, unfortunately). Why is it on my list? Because it's quirky, gorgeous 2d high-definition platformer with, again, great music, and fuck did I need one of those. Don't get me wrong; it's not BAD. Just people were talking about it like it was in the same league as Galaxy, or even Meat Boy, and it's not. It's a little slow, the jump is a little off, the button layout is poor, the bosses are decent-enough but suffer from pretty awful trial-and-error player approaches… yep. I like bright, vibrant, fun games, and platformers are my favorite genre. So Rayman inched its way into my heart. But last year I said I would've happily paid $50 for for a $15 downloadable game and I paid $30 for this $60 offering, feeling that was the right price. Meat Boy really is better in every way. The only thing I would acquiesce to someone who would like to argue this point would be visuals.
7. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine ; When this game was first announced, yes, I was one of those "lol it's like Gears" guys. Well, not on that level, but I barely knew anything about Warhammer. I only knew that people credited it for inspiring Gears design, Warcraft and Starcraft designs, etc. But I did say "haha, it's called 'Space Marine!?' How dumb!" And by the time I was done with Space Marine I wouldn't have wanted to call it anything else. There is a reason why the idea of space marines did become so popular in the first place. How fitting it is then that one of the things most responsible for this popularity in the first place came out of no where to remind you why it's so badass to begin with. Yeah yeah yeah, the melee is fine, but not too deep, and the shooting is serviceable but not amazing—though playing a game where you can seamlessly transition from melee TO shooting and back again is pretty damn special—but that's not what made me love Space Marine. Nor was it the surprising score (what a great year for soundtracks), or decent narrative, or the art-style. It was the universe that drew me in, specifically in Tidus the main character. You'd expect a game called Space Marine to have some shitty bald dudebros. Not gentlemen who probably read up on Shakespeare and take the time to part their hair before slaughtering orks. I know that must seem weird, but it was always endearing to have Tidus speak like a gallant knight right after he's stomped a hundred orks into blood puddles. Also, as much as dislike the Orks to begin with, that main bad Ork was another great character.
6. Infamous 2 ; I did not like Infamous 1 as much as many other people did. The framerate and pop-in was horribly distracting, I did not like almost any of the characters, the "choice" system was laughably stupid, and worst of all I found the grey, gritty tone of the world to be downright shitty. But it was still an open-world game with platforming elements (ding), fun traversal and movement abilities (ding), and a comic book theme (ding ding). Best of all, much like how the pairing of melee and shooting in Warhammer sweetened my sour heart, the impeccable mechanics of Infamous's basic "shooting" slapped on top of an open-world was really inspiring. You were left thinking "if these guys can get it right, why can't a huge studio like Rockstar?" I mean, it really does deserve special-mention. Infamous's shooting is as good as a GOOD dedicated TPS.
Fast-forward to two years later, I fire up the Infamous 2 demo and after about five minutes I rush to the thread on GAF. I could not believe how beautiful, colorful, vibrant this new game was when compared to the Gears-of-Grey from the first. Rich oranges and purples and pinks in a sunset, bright blues in the water and the sky, flashing neon lights of every variety, just a lovely game to lay my eyes on. The sequel retained the wonderful mechanics of the original whilst adding even better upgrades (for the most part) and making it even easier to change your powers on the fly. The characters were vastly improved in this game, as was the writing, and especially the VO. I wish I could have the time to create a topic and showcase why this game had such good voice-acting, particularly Kuo, as alas so many people seem to not recognize how well the actors did on this game. Unfortunately Infamous 2 continued with its predecessor's lame binary choice system, which while the idea was improved upon, the game would have been better served with a more linear narrative. There are some very interesting concepts and plot points in the Infamous universe which I feel the development team rushed over in their self-imposed desire for player choice. Just make us the hero, that's fine. However I do feel the need to point out that one of the late-game choices was actually incredibly well-done, despite what you may have heard to the contrary. It wasn't that Kuo and Nix weren't properly portrayed in these final moments. The game actually did something incredibly interesting by making them act like human beings. Fearful, angry, emotional. It made total sense and it's sad that more people didn't realize this scene's genius.
5. Bulletstorm ; Every year I have a GOTY and a surprise of the year. This was the latter of 2011 for me. I thought I would LOATHE this game. It seemed so bro, so stupid, and even though I would look at it and say "hm, that actually doesn't look like a shitty brown Unreal game" and "those gunplay mechanics actually sound quite fun," I was resistant until the very end. As it turns out the "bro" nature of this game isn't supposed to be taken seriously at all. In fact, it's making fun of the idea roided-up male machismo more than anything, so instantly that theme goes from a negative to a super-positive in my book. And that really changed my entire perception of Bulletstorm. Suddenly the characters are charming and funny and different and interesting—and they really are. There are only really like five characters in the whole game, and they're all quite different, even in their basic appearance. Suddenly the game isn't a groan-fest but something that is making me smile from how fun it is to play and laugh from how funny it is at a fairly even-pace. There is one particular moment in one of the final chapters that made me throw my head back and laugh, something that rarely happens in any circumstance, whether it be a piece of media or real-life. It was a joke that's been done in so many other forms before, but in a genre where it's all about fulfilling the male power fantasy, to suddenly have the wind sucked out from you like that in that moment was really unexpected and I loved the game for it. Also, while all the characters were great, I really appreciated the developers' handling of Trishka. She deserves more than a few mentions in six months when inevitably the next "Girls in Games that aren't Whores" topic comes up. People Can Fly never treated her like an object, not even a little bit. She was capable, and independent, and smart and witty and even in the end they never pursued the obvious love-interest path. This game surprised me in every way.
From a basic gameplay perspective, PCF succeeded in making a first-person shooter that had some really fun weapons and player-choice with those weapons. In fact, that is one of my few criticisms of Bulletstorm; there just weren't enough weapons. I think there were six or seven, and some of them are very basic "assault rifle, handgun, shotgun, etc." For all the variety and joy the developers were able to accomplish with just these few weapons, it's a a shame there weren't more. Also, while the game is truly beautiful in some spots, there were unfortunately some boring environments, particularly those underground. And the game was too short. That really sums up Bulletstorm's shortcomings; they were so busy working their asses off to make something special they just didn't have enough time to make enough of it. It truly is a shame we probably won't get a sequel, because twice THIS game would be a real GOTY contender.
4. Batman: Arkham City ; Heh, let's see if I can start shutting up. I don't think I have much to say about this game. Yup, the soundtrack is good (Who'da thunk? On my list?). Umm… let's see. I loved Arkham Asylum, despite its few problems. What's strange to me about Arkham City is that unlike the other games on this list where I say the developers just didn't do quite enough, Arkham City seems to be the only game where its problems stem from Rocksteady trying to do too much. The melee system of Batman may be the best around (it's this or Bayonetta), but Rocksteady tried so much to improve upon it there was just too much going on: why is Batman pulling his dumb electrical gun out of midair to shoot someone? Yes, those animations are very impressive, but must their randomization and exquisite detail be so much that they interrupt the rhythm of the fight and often lead to an enemy getting a shot to break my combo? A shot he wouldn't have gotten had the fight-animation dice-roll given any of animations 01-34 instead of one of 35-43.
The city itself even seems to suffer from this, from there being too many Riddler trophies, too many buildings in your way, to there just being too much damn random talking, to the point where there were times when THREE different characters were talking at once and I couldn't understand any of them!
So why is it number four on my list? Because you still feel like a fucking BADASS 90% of the time. Because counters are INCREDIBLY fun in games, and Rocksteady made a brilliant decisions in Asylum to make countering easy as hell, much like it would be for the Batman, while making the depth be combo-variety based, allowing people to either just take it easy or really try to dig into the system, making both casuals and experts have a fantastic time. Because the game is gorgeous. Because the Batman universe is interesting. Because it features one of the greatest boss fights I've ever seen in any game ever (and really, all of them were drastic improvements on Asylum). Because it's just fun. Just flying around the city is fun, doing (some of) the Riddler puzzles is fun, stealth is (or at least can be) fun, and the fighting is typically some of the most fun you can have in a campaign today.
3. LittleBigPlanet 2 ; Ok, here's a game I don't need to talk much about. It's the creativity and unbridled joy that is LBP, improved upon in every single way. It again offers so much variety in what a player can do, which is often the key to making any game truly fun. And the peerless user-generated content gives LBP 2 some of the longest legs of any game ever. You can play a 2d platformer, or a twin-stick shooter, or an isometric adventure, OR FUCKING LUNAR LANDER! The game is overflowing with content, l… like literally. Like, you'll never play it all. Is it all great? Nope. But even the dumbest stages put a smile on my face with the game's intrinsic charm. If you don't like something in LBP 2, you're the kind of jerk-face who criticizes a kid's drawing. You need to go to church or something, Ebenezer.
Oh, and Avalon Centrifuge is one of the best characters from the year.
Double-oh; this game has a good soundtrack.
2. Portal 2 ; I had to take the whole month of December to decide for sure who would win my Game of the Year (my COVETED goty, that is), and Portal 2 just lost by a hair. It really came down to the long and frequent load times and the easy nature of some of the puzzles, coupled with the frustrating nature of some of the lesser ones. Sometimes you could walk into a room, not really see the solution but just know "well, I'm sure one of my portals needs to go there, because it's basically the only place to put it. I mean, the game might as well just make the spot glow" and other times you'd walk into a huge cavern and say "… I don't even see a place TO put a portal…"
But let me not harp on the game's flaws! It's delightful! It's funny as fuck with a wonderfully surprising narrative and clearly the best characters of the year. Well, maybe just the single best. Yes, as much as I loved Avalon, or Kuo, or Cutter, Wheatley is easily the best character of the year, which is both a testament to Stephen Merchant's talents and the writing team of Valve. I loved and hated that little bastard, and sometimes I loved him while hating him. It was such an unexpected turn in the game's plot, yet so smart. I should say the same of the way they handled GLaDOS; just when I was starting to have my fill, just when I was about to say for both of these AI companions "ok, this is funny and all, but I'm not sure I want this same tone for the rest of the game" WHAM, they changed it up, both in introducing the brilliant Cave Johnson and in changing the tone of Wheatley and GLaDOS themselves.
Yeah, this game really is a credit to game-writing more than anything else. While I'm actually not a big fan of the first Portal, I did greatly appreciate the creativity of the portal-device itself in a game space. And while the sequel did add some new dimensions to Portal's user experience, I don't know how this game would've fared for me personally if it were just a puzzle game. No, it's the world, the characters, the narrative, the mystery and the details that make Portal 2 so special to me. The best example of what this game offers is the degeneration of Aperture's test subjects, as conveyed by Cave Johnson. He starts by welcoming heroic astronauts, to begging middle-Americans, to nearly enslaving the homeless.
It is both incredibly funny, and yet also insightful as a narrative device. I loved this game.
1. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception ; I think the reason why this game made it to the top of my list while others were more disappointed in it than I was because I had my expectations in check. I think Uncharted 2 is hands-down the best game of this generation. I actually first started writing this list by writing about three paragraphs just explaining why Uncharted 2 was so damn good before I realized this is not the place. That's how much I love that game. I will play it every year at least once for at least another five years.
Anyway, we all knew there would be a sequel before one was even announced. Now, I am a cocky, arrogant, know-it-all, brilliant, creative, amazing little bastard, and almost always I can immediately list off a ton of obvious changes that "blah blah blah, if I were making this game (instead of making my living in a far less attractive industry) this is what I would do to make it better" and "if these developers were smart, they'd do this next time, and they should take it from me even though I have no artistic or programming ability, bleep." But with Uncharted 3 a near-inevitability, I was really scratching my head.
Yes, of course there were obvious improvements like "make the multiplayer have more options" and "make the puzzles better, derp," but nothing substantial, or in-depth. I had no idea what Naughty Dog could even do to make a sequel that would make the same splash as Among Thieves did. I mean, you were in Tibet, running on rooftops fighting a helicopter with a grenade launcher with your hot British girlfriend, before going into an ice cave with your awesome indecipherable foreign buddy, whose lovable quaint little village you save from a freaking tank, before going into Shangri-La to stop the Siberian warlord (an amazingly good choice for a villain). Again, yes, there are some "derp" improvements of "those blue guys took too many bullets," yeah yeah, yippee. But where does Drake go that is more awesome than snowy Nepal? What does he fight that's cooler than a helicopter on a rooftop? What set-piece is cooler than a collapsing building, or train that's coming apart, or mythical city crumbling? What characters are better than good-girl reporter, spunky vixen-in-crime, and young Ghandi with a big knife? Where do you take the franchise?
I was stumped. I can't think of anything more interesting than these things. So when Naughty Dog announced "YO, THIS ONE'S IN THE SAND!" I shrugged. Yeah, ok, sure, whatever. It won't be as good a Among Thieves, but nothing else will probably be for this entire generation. "Yo, this time you're in a boat!" Uh-huh, that sounds pretty cool.
And if we were just talking about campaigns, Uncharted 3 might not even make my top three. That boat section was awesome, but narratively (which should be Uncharted's best feature) it felt like some sort of side-chapter from a DLC pack. The locations were not nearly as good as they were in U2, which I did expect, as I always find desert areas far less appealing than jungle or arctic. What actually did disappoint me was the Elena-angle, as I felt they were retelling the same story for the third time, and combine that with the obvious drop-off in character designs to begin with and I actually felt my connection with these characters drop significantly. And the ending itself, from the final area to the final scene, also gave me a bad sense of deja-vus. In a lot of ways I'm pretty worried about the Uncharted franchise. I suppose the good thing I can say is that I actually do have plenty of ideas of where to take the series now so, you know, you guys can finally hire me to do that for you. … I'll need my own personal chef. Just so you know.
Yet I still had fun. Drake makes me laugh, Cutter was a great addition, those early chapters were really, truly special (as good as much of Among Thieves), I still quite like Elena and Chloe and Sully (even if not as much as I used to), the game is so freaking gorgeous and detailed—I mean, just the Yemen town alone has more thought put into its environment than perhaps all of Battlefield 3—the soundtrack (what?) is a treat, as always. The game's real good, even better with the shooting patch. If this was just a single-player game, it would still make my top ten, though maybe not my top five. Note: it is an absolute shame that Naughty Dog showed off both the airplane scene and the boat scene, as even though they are both inherently flawed, they were the most epic moments of the year and would have hit so much harder had no one expected it.
So why is it my number one? Multiplayer. "What? Uncharted's multiplayer isn't good, haha, you're stupid." Well if I'm so stupid, why is Naughty Dog hiring me and giving me a personal chef? Yeah… that's right; you better shut up.
Listen, I know it may seem like a standard ho-hum third person shooter with some pretty uninteresting weapons. Know what? You're kind of right. And you also probably think the traversal of Uncharted is shallow. You're also kind of right. But here's where you're wrong; while the climbing is actually off-putting in the campaign for its ease and automation, it is a brilliant piece of game design for a multiplayer mode, even if they lucked into it. For it is the verticality of Uncharted's competitive MP that makes it different than other shooters.
Yet, all of these things could also be said about Uncharted 2. So, why is U3 better? Well, more maps, for one. Second, a whole lot of customization. Third, timed-throwback of grenades. Seriously, you don't know how big a deal this is until you've done it yourself. Fourth: kickbacks. The thing that sent the Uncharted community into a frenzy because of how it would break the game is one of my favorite things. It's sort of like a killstreak but, smartly, Naughty Dog has this build from your medals and not your kills, meaning that you can get your reward by doing things other than having a high KDR, a feature multiplayer games have needed for awhile, not that no others have taken this approach. And then your kickback ranges from useful to just plain fun. I mean, I just love throwing clusterbombs. I just FUCKING. LOVE. IT.
Lastly is the loot aspect, which is not as in-depth as it should be but is such a welcome feature to an online shooter. Treasures drop as you play, and you can run over and grab 'em. Collect a set and you get some gear. Yes, that's it. Y… Y-Yes, I agree, there should be more to it. When someone does it better I will give them credit. For now though Naughty Dog wins. It's addicting. It's just nice to feel like you're getting something for your time. It's very much like Achievement Lust.
To be clear, I don't think Uncharted 3 is the best multiplayer game this generation. But I do think Uncharted 3 is perhaps the best multiplayer game of the year. I put more time into either of the two betas than I put into Battlefield 3. While I won't play Drake's Deception's campaign a dozen times like U2, I do see myself continuing to go back to the MP for at least another year, if not longer. That is more than I can say for any other game on this list.
