Top Games of 2011
2011 has been a colossal year for video games. Since it would be even more impossible than usual to order a complete ranking of the year’s top titles, I’ve instead elected to organise the best fifteen games into four tiers of overall quality. If you’re looking for recommendations, aim for the higher tiers, but I’d be reluctant to advocate any entry over another in the same tier. Let’s get started.
TIER FOUR
The Binding of Isaac — An unusual Flash-based dungeon crawler from the creators of Super Meat Boy, featuring permanent death, randomised maps and items, and disturbing imagery. You control Isaac, who escapes into the basement when his mother attempts to sacrifice him to God. Isaac can move around the Zelda-inspired rooms and shoot tears in the four compass directions, while collecting keys, bombs, and other powerful items that shake up the gameplay. A single playthrough of the game (assuming you aren’t killed) takes around one hour, but you’ll have to finish the game a minimum of ten times to see events unfold all the way through to the end. (A Halloween update also added an additional, brutal level called ‘Sheol’, in which you must fight Satan himself.) This was the game I loved to hate during my exam period, as it turned out to be far more addictive than the short break from study I had intended it to be — Steam tells me I’ve put 20 hours into it. Definitely worth the $5, but still nowhere close to the free fun of Super Meat Boy. Danny Baranowsky’s great soundtrack also becomes tragically repetitive, as do the sounds of Isaac’s tears and enemies, so you’ll want to turn off the sound after a few playthroughs.
Bastion — Another independent Steam game with a cheap price tag. Bastion is a colourful isometric shooter, famously narrated all the way through by a gravelly-voiced old man who, amazingly, never gets annoying. You’ll unlock some impressive weapons as you blast your way through the five-hour story, and there are plenty of bonus levels, achievements, and difficult challenge levels to come back for after you’re done. Bastion was a blast the whole way through, but like Isaac, was never intended to compete with the bigger titles. Hard to beat this kind of value for money, though.
Gears of War 3 — Many will tell me that Gears 3 deserves a higher slot than this, and maybe they’re right. I never actually owned Gears 2 and picked this one up mostly on a whim, as there weren’t many other major releases around. While I certainly didn’t have many complaints about the ten-hour campaign as I was playing it through, and it’s still a great game for two players, Gears 3 just didn’t stick in my memory a month later. The look and gameplay of the game has barely changed since the original all the way back in 2006, and the story, while satisfying, can’t compete with the original brutal vision of Sera presented in Gears of War. I don’t consider the Gears series among my top game series, and I’m not interested in the online multiplayer, but the game was easily worth my $50 and deserves the love it receives from many others.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 — Another series of games that needs no introduction. MW3 is the eighth entry in the long-running acclaimed shooter series, and in contrast to Gears of War 3, had an epic and enjoyable campaign that certainly captures the feel of a third world war, along with providing a satisfying end for the characters we’ve become surprisingly attached to. I haven’t yet touched the online multiplayer or the apparently-extensive Spec Ops missions, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it and enjoy it. So why not the higher rating? Two reasons. The first is the ludicrously short length of the campaign, which I finished in four hours on Regular (normal) difficulty. Like I said, it’s very well done, but I’m a single-player gamer and I need more for the price tag. Nevertheless, I’m eager to get back into it on Vetern, and I’m aware it’ll take me a lot longer when I’m being killed every few seconds. The second reason is the soundtrack — I consider the soundtrack to Modern Warfare 2, composed by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe, to be an utter masterpiece. The soundtrack to MW3, by action-film composer Brian Tyler, doesn’t even come close, and for me this is a huge deal. That I consider MW3 to be the worst of the ‘trilogy’ while including it alongside Gears 3 should be taken as reinforcement of the quality of its predecessors.
TIER THREE
Bulletstorm — An innovative and raucously fun first-person shooter that doesn’t take itself seriously while providing incredible thrills with fantastic weapons. Bulletstorm is sheer fun from beginning to end, and succeeds largely on its inventive system in which more money is awarding for creative kills, making the outdated visuals and light-hearted story easily forgivable.
L.A. Noire — L.A. Noire is one of the most unusual major titles of the year, straight out of a development studio here in Bondi, Sydney. You play as Cole Phelps, a Los Angeles officer in the 1940s who quickly rises through the ranks as he tackles unusual cases across the City of Angels. The game is extremely convincing and one of the most realistic historical experiences I’ve ever had — the advanced motion-captured visuals are particularly amazing, and the diverging cases and clues are very well done. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, and for me, L.A. Noire hits the right note of story emphasis that wasn’t there in GTA while also not forcing you to play as a murderous thug. I borrowed the game from a friend and had to return it before I was able to finish the story, but I’ll be getting my hands on it again as soon as possible.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution — Another title where the world is as much a star as the main character. Human Revolution is ambitious in its dark, dystopic view of Earth’s future and features a world where human augmentation is a controversial runaway technology. Players are free to tackle the story and missions in a variety of play styles, from all-out gunfights to stealth — there’s even an achievement for finishing the entire game without taking a single life. It’s rare that I’m interested in examining every detail and object in a game world as large as this one (you visit several wide cities during the game), but I couldn’t get enough of the world of Deus Ex. Sadly, it’s another game I didn’t finish before the next slew of releases, and I aim to return to it to see it through.
Portal 2 — Portal 2 was one of the most acclaimed titles of the year, and it’s certainly deserving of that honour. I doubt there’s anyone left unfamiliar with the premise, but to restate it, you tackle fiendish first-person puzzles armed only with a gun that can create two linked portals on any flat, hard surface. Portal 2 has a fantastic story with hilariously voice-acted evil robots on all sides, as well as a fun set of co-operative puzzles completely separate from the single-player game, but in the end still didn’t feel like a ‘full’ enough game to compete with other titles with more content. A blast while it lasts, though.
Dark Souls — Dark Souls, RPG dungeon crawler and successor to the notoriously hard Demon’s Souls, is the most recent addition to my collection and a title I’m playing at the moment. I can’t say Demon’s Souls was a favourite game of mine, but I appreciated the skill-intensive gameplay, the punishment of excessive risk, and the ghostly online interactions with other players. I like Dark Souls better than Demon’s Souls, and I’m nowhere near finished with it, but the problem remains that I’m never sure if I’m enjoying the game or just enduring it — not many games can make me so frustrated that I accidentally hurt myself while venting on a lounge cushion.
TIER TWO
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations — I believe that AC:R has the lowest aggregate Metacritic score of every game on this list; somewhere around 80. The main problems that reviewers have with it seem to be that it is ‘too much of more of the same’, and they’re also critical of Desmond’s puzzle sections and the newly-added ‘den defence’ minigame that must be undertaken whenever the Templars attack one of your strongholds. In response to the first, I’d say that it’s a matter of opinion, but I’m a huge fan of the AC series and have not been let down at all by the prospect of ‘more of the same’ so far. In my opinion, the additions of the hook blade, bomb customisation (which is actually good!), challenging stronghold takeovers, and Altair missions are all terrific and well-implemented. I’m also enjoying the story as much as any of Ezio’s previous entries. In response to the complaints about the Desmond and den defence sections, I’ll start by pointing out that both of these are completely optional. You unlock Desmond’s strange Portal-esque, Animus-powered puzzles by collecting some of the 100 hidden ‘data fragments’ in Constantinople (which is the greatest AC city yet, by the way). And the den defences only occur if you let your notoriety reach 100%, and even then, it takes a criminal act to trigger them. In any case, I don’t think either of these two elements are nearly as bad as they’re being made out to be. Revelations is another successful and completely immersive entry in this series, in my books — it’s amazing how much it can suck you in, even as a third-person game.
Dead Space 2 — It’s hard to believe this was also the year we saw Dead Space 2, all the way back in January. I’m not the biggest fan of horror games, but when they’re accompanied by bleak, hard science fiction as Dead Space is, I’m all for it. Shooting the limbs off of the monstrous, zombified human inhabitants of ‘the Sprawl’ is even more fun than it was in the original 2008 game, and there are plenty of new enemies and incredible set pieces to boot. The story is bigger, better, and longer, and I still highly recommend playing on the hardest mode you can stomach (though you won’t find me attempting Hardcore mode, which in addition to being brutally difficult only allows you to save three times across the entire game).
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim — Despite professing to not be the biggest fan of TES IV: Oblivion from 2006, I still ended up putting a good 80 hours into it. I’m pleased to report that Skyrim fixes essentially every problem I had with Oblivion and includes plenty of new features, along with a game world that is even better to look at than Cyrodiil. First and foremost among these improvements is the levelling system, which no longer require painful amounts of effort to fully exploit. Attributes have been removed in favour of a system where simply levelling up enough skills pushes you to the next level, when you can boost your health, magicka, or stamina. Dragons are impressive, magic is much more satisfying, stealth is no longer a binary state of detected/undetected, and the majority of dungeons have a very unique feel. So why not Tier One? It’s not because of the glitches, which haven’t bothered me at all, but rather the fact that I’m struggling to find the motivation to push beyond 60 hours of play time. I’m nowhere near finished with Skyrim, and I can’t explain why I’ve lost a bit of interest, but I do know it’s not quite on par with my Tier One titles.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception — Uncharted 3 was my most anticipated game of the year, and by no means was it a let down. The story is an incredible adventure from beginning to end, with a few fantastic new characters and a couple of tweaks to the near-perfect gameplay of Uncharted 2. There are even more incredible set pieces (I won’t do them the injustice of spoilerage), multiplayer is still a bit of fun, and there’s a new split-screen cooperative mode that I sadly haven’t had the chance to try out, but I’m sure it’s great as well. If Uncharted 2 didn’t exist, then Uncharted 3 would easily be in the next tier, but it can’t avoid the comparison to its predecessor — and in my opinion, Uncharted 2 has the better single-player mode. The ending of Uncharted 3, as many will tell you, was much too sudden and left an uncomfortable amount of unanswered questions. Four of its twenty-two chapters were spent building up to the cruise ship segment from the E3 demo, and the story was essentially put on pause during these tangential chapters, which is a shame.
TIER ONE
Well, here we are in Tier One. For me, there were two clear winners in 2011 — two games I enjoyed more than any other. If I were forced to choose a ‘Game of the Year’, I’d also probably be able to do that, but not by a large enough margin to warrant an additional tier. I’ll write about my Tentative Runner-Up to Game of the Year for 2011 first, and then get onto my Tentative Supreme Hallmark of Video Game Excellence for 2011.
RUNNER-UP: Xenoblade Chronicles — Xenoblade Chronicles is a Japanese RPG that still hasn’t been released in the US, and won’t be until April next year. As such, it’s been tragically overlooked in this month’s 2011 awards across the Internet. It’s a masterpiece of an RPG that takes me back to the lengthy, inspired stories, beautiful worlds, fantastic characters, and thrilling combat in the glory days of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII, two of my all-time favourite games. Of course, I’ve already written extensively about XC in a long post in which I compared it to the disappointing Final Fantasy XIII, so I don’t have much to add. I’ve played a lot more of XC since then — around 60 hours now — and I haven’t lost my motivation for it the same way I lost interest in Skyrim. The only reason I put it down back in October was because of my exams, and I just picked it up again today after exhausting November’s barrage of titles. Of course, XC is about as different an RPG as you could imagine from Skyrim — they showcase the best efforts from Eastern and Western developers, respectively — but Xenoblade Chronicles‘ strong focus on what Skyrim would call ‘the main quest’ makes it the clear winner in my eyes.
GAME OF THE YEAR: Batman: Arkham City
I’m a huge fan of Batman, though I’m sure many will consider it strange (if not blasphemous) that the first exposure I had to the Caped Crusader was after watching Batman Begins on TV in the weeks leading up to the cinematic release of The Dark Knight, in July 2008. I can’t explain why, but watching Batman Begins for the first time — specifically, on-air — was the best film experience I’ve ever had. The score, the atmosphere, the story…it all just worked for me. So when Batman: Arkham Asylum turned out to be a near-masterpiece in 2009, I named it my second-favourite game of the year (behind Uncharted 2: Among Thieves). But this year, with the release of the sequel and complete masterpiece Batman: Arkham City, Batman has edged out Nathan Drake and thirteen other worthy titles for the top spot in my heart.
Developer Rocksteady’s first masterstroke was to limit the size of the ‘open world’ of Arkham City. Instead of bloating it out to the size of Skyrim or Liberty City, they put their efforts into making a moderately-sized sandbox inwhich every square centimetre is memorable. There are Riddler secrets hidden around every corner, a dozen deep side-missions involving a host of entertaining Batman villains and challenges, extra content playable as Catwoman, and vulnerable thugs patrolling every dank street, just waiting to be snatched up into the air by a man dressed as a giant bat. Combat is also, amazingly, even smoother and more enjoyable than it was in Asylum, thanks to a host of new moves and the improved ability to counter the attacks of multiple enemies at any time. So it’s no surprise that the endless combat and predator challenges available outside the main story mode are also even better — you can also unlock Robin as a playable character, and he doesn’t disappoint.
I started a second, harder playthrough of Arkham City literally as soon as the end credits to the brilliant story had finished rolling, and I can’t claim that for many games. Batman: Arkham City is a masterpiece from beginning to end, and both it and Xenoblade Chronicles have become two of my all-time favourite games alongside FFX, FFXII, BioShock, Halo 2, and the Metroid Prime series.
Well, that concludes my miniature awards ceremony. Hopefully, I’ve done a decent job of recommending any and all of these titles if you’re a fan of games and missed out on some of them. Of course, there are plenty of games I didn’t actually get to play this year — the biggest miss being Skyward Sword, the new Zelda game, which is already acclaimed. I’ll be picking that up as soon as I get the money, and I might add my opinion of it to this list. I’ve also heard good things about Rayman: Origins, Sonic Generations, and Battlefield 3.
That’s all for now. If you read through all 3000 of these words, I probably owe you a copy of Arkham City. Buy it and leave your bank details and password with me, and I’ll reimburse you.
