Early Games of 2011

If you want to make sure that you don't win any awards ever, then you must release your game in the window between late December and before September. No matter how good your game is, the gaming press has a memory that ends at Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI, and then resumes a month ago, regardless of the date.

Or make the game a PC exclusive. The mainstream gaming press and generic humans are terrified of PC games. It's like the game just working is more important than the overall quality of the release, or something.

That's a whole other post.

Anyway, I've chopped my 24 games of 2011 into four groups of six, and I'll go through them chronologically. Once I'm done, I'll highlight my favorites in another post and comment a bit more on them.

If you don't see your favorite game on here, all it means is that I didn't buy it. If you think it's good, and I didn't buy it, it's probably from a tired franchise or genre, or it's a whimsy-filled, story-free cutesy game for babies. I'm sure it's great, though.

Here's the first six, with comments attached.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
And this marks the first of several really great games that I barely touched this year, and have been tossed onto the pile of shame.

This is the next game from the Ace Attorney developers, and deserved a lot more attention than I gave it. I devoured each of the AA games, but for some reason, this one didn't quite grab me the same way.

I used to play these types of games at night, while in bed, but it seems my NookColor is winning that war. Or maybe I'm just having a LOT more sex now. No ... that can't possibly be it.

Anyway, I find that these games are perfect for end-of-the-day relaxation. They challenge the mind and tickle the intellect.

The visuals were gorgeous, the writing was solid, and these guys are great at really making games that use the DS well.


Dead Space 2
Wow. This is how to do a sequel.

I shouldn't like this series, since there are very few RPG aspects to it, but the storytelling is fantastic, and the action is reasonably good.

The first Dead Space startled me with how enjoyable it was. To prepare myself, I played the prequel PS3 Move game, Extraction, watched the first film, I read the comics and the novel, and found that I love the depth of this universe.

I blasted my way through the first game, loved it, loved everything about it, especially the story, then found myself tolerating the downloadable Dead Space Ignition, then found myself really enjoying the iPad Dead Space, then I watched the new movie, and then I found myself digging the new comic, and then it was time for Dead Space 2.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Isaac Clarke no longer being a 'silent protagonist' a la Crono or that retard Link.

It worked beautifully. I was surprised. In fact, I hope they keep it this way. Yeah, having him be silent raises the tension by making the player more invested as Isaac being 'me,' but I think Visceral realized that this isn't really a 'horror' series so much as an action-ish scary story.

This series nails 'immersive.' From the lack of a HUD to the way that the story is told through radio and video transmissions to the environments, everything feels 'real' in a truly unreal world.

Oh, and I never played the multiplayer. I'm kinda sad that money was spent on it, and sagged this game's budget unnecessarily, and then was built into the cost of my Limited Edition.

I haven't played the DLC, Severed, yet.

I haven't seen this game show up on any 'best of 2011' lists yet, and that's just wrong. This was the best game of the first quarter, but because of the way the gaming press's memory works, it's as if this game never existed. Idiots.


Marvel vs Capcom 3: The Fate of Two Worlds
Yeah, I've only played the multiplayer on this with my son (who is insanely good at this now.)

This game is fun, and I actually really do enjoy the fact that it's crazy imbalanced. And the art ... yeah, it's awesome.

This is the only fighting series that I own. My son and I love playing this.

Oh, and skip this game altogether and get Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 instead.


Bulletstorm
Sometimes, I make impulse buys.

This was actually kinda fun, though. It also made me realize how tired I am of the futuristic rough & tough guy.

This game reminds me of when a young guy takes a chance and starts dating / banging that girl that's clearly troubled and clearly high ALL THE TIME. You have a great time for a week or so, and then you start worrying about someone finding out about her or contracting a venereal disease.

In this game's defense, it did have a sort-of tongue-in-cheek over-the-top approach that was coupled with some pretty solid gameplay. I liked the sense of humor a lot and found the action fairly rewarding.

Actually, the more I'm thinking back to this game, the more I'm realizing that I actually really did enjoy my time with it. I may dust this off at some point, actually.


Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 - Retribution
The longest title of the year, for sure.

I'm still working my way through the prior expansion, so I haven't done much with this, aside from the Last Stand mode, and a little multiplayer here and there.

This is a rock-solid series, though, from the best RTS dev in the world, Relic. If you like RTS games at all, check this series out.


Dragon Age II
Before the games that came out in 2011, I was ready to declare the 'Dragon Age' series as my new favorite series.

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat here: Dragon Age II is not a bad game. Fundamentally, it's a  solid RPG. It is. The writing is engaging, the gameplay mechanics that we loved in the first game are still intact, if de-emphasized, and while this title was skewed a bit more toward roping in the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Call of Duty crowd, the skeleton of what we loved about the first game was still intact. The problem was, the muscle and 'healthy fat' had been greatly reduced.

I consume everything that's Dragon Age-related, because I love the lore, the I love the world they've crafted, I love the characters, and I love the fact that it's fantasy tinged with the brutality of the real world. To take a series that is already known for its scope and to cram into one city is problematic at best. If the city had the life and vitality of a Shenmue, it'd be okay, but this is not the case.

Additionally, the whole game, much like Mass Effect 2, reeked of 'streamlining,' or in a more honest phrase, 'dumbing-down.'

Let's be real here. One need only look at TV ratings and game sales to see that most people aren't interested in intellectual challenges. Reality TV and 'modern war' games dominate the charts, and since there is no such thing as 'enough money,' every single franchise, from Star Trek to Dragon Age, has to be made less challenging to those who hate thinking and being patient. You're either the biggest, most saturated, most bloated intellectual property out there, or you're a horrid fucking loser.

In the attempt to curry the generic human, Bioware kept touting the 'action' aspects of Dragon Age II, and from what I've heard, the PS360 users greatly suffered on the combat side. PC users still had the same basic interface, which was a blessing. Well, if 'not totally sucking' is a blessing.

In any case, the game went from an emphasis on careful, considered approaches to twitch gaming. This started with the combat, but really trickled down to everything else. Like Mass Effect 2, the world and story felt much more constricted, and not a place in which I could lose myself for a few hours.

Where Ferelden felt like a sprawling, diverse world that contained multiple cities and multiple areas of adventure, Kirkwall felt like a boring prison that had some interesting stories that were artificially protracted by the 'story within a story' approach, as brilliantly narrated by Varric.

What gives me hope, though, is the DLC that was released. Each release has been incrementally better, and seems to have a little more soul.

Dragon Age II was rushed, dumbed-down, and the biggest disappointment of 2012. How can a good game be bad? By making the mistakes the developers made on this one. They traded market share for soul.

And that's the end of the beginning. Those are the first six games that I bought in 2011. Dead Space has been great, Dragon Age II was good, if disappointing, and the rest still need some attention.

What say you? What did you think of these games? What have I already missed? What else should be in further posts? TELL ME NOW! DON'T WAIT FOR THE TRANSLATION!

-Blaine