My Gaming 2011 In Summary

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Icemael

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Edited By Icemael

I cannot help but look at this year with mixed emotions.  On the one hand, for me as a European who enjoys arcade games, this has been an absolutely stellar year with Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, Deathsmiles, The King of Fighters XIII and Arcana Heart 3 getting localized, Muchi Muchi Pork! and Pink Sweets being released in a region-free port compilation, and the excellent Hard Corps: Uprising coming out via Xbox Live Arcade. On the other hand, the list of games that failed to live up to my expectations is long, including Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Dead Space 2, Shadows of the Damned, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Bulletstorm in addition to many more that I'm not going to bother mentioning here. No year is free of letdowns, of course, but it's very rare for this many releases to disappoint me in a single year.


Anyhow, let's forget about the bummers for now. Here are my ten favourite 2011 releases, my five favourite pre-2011 releases I didn't end up checking out until this year, and the ten upcoming 2012 releases I'm most excited for. If you're American and some of the releases seem off it's probably because, as mentioned earlier, I'm European.


1. Dodonpachi Resurrection


No Caption Provided
This fantastic shoot ‘em up package features several excellent modes with loads of challenging bullet patterns and fun scoring systems that mix and match elements from a variety of games in the genre (I especially enjoy the scoring in Arrange A, which combines Daioujou and Daifukkatsu 1.5 and ends up being more fun than both). It also provides an incomparable audiovisual experience with superb music  – the Black Label soundtrack in particular is just out of this world  – and some of the best 2D graphics in the business (colourful, well-animated and extremely detailed, with countless dazzling special effects and beautifully rendered enemy sprites dominating the screen at virtually all times – the visual experience is second only to Vanillaware’s stuff in terms of overall quality, and unmatched in terms of intensity). Espgaluda II and Mushihime-sama Futari 1.5 remain my favourite games from Cave, but this has taken Daioujou’s place as my favourite Donpachi title, and it’s easily my favourite release of the year.

2. Muchi Muchi Pork! & Pink Sweets


No Caption Provided
Muchi Muchi Pork! is well-paced, very challenging and has great boss battles, but more importantly, it's got what is without question my favourite shoot ‘em up scoring system. Collecting pigs released by destroyed enemies, unleashing powerful lard attacks to fill the screen with giant, golden pig-head medals and then sucking them all up is incredibly addicting and immensely satisfying. Pink Sweets with its crazy rank system and unique bomb mechanic is pretty fun as well, but I honestly haven’t played much of it – whenever I pop this port collection in I inevitably end up spending most of my time playing Pork, even if my initial intention is to practice Sweets. The only real complaint I have is that the games didn’t get the graphical upgrade included in most of Cave’s other Xbox 360 ports. They would have looked great with hi-res sprites.
 

3. Hard Corps: Uprising


No Caption Provided
Hard Corps: Uprising builds on the foundation laid by the Contra games of old with a plethora of new special moves, and the result is the fastest run ‘n gun I have ever played. By mastering the dash, the vault, the dodge et al. one can zoom through the stages at lightning speed, breezing through enemies and other obstacles like they’re nothing, and it feels absolutely incredible. The presentation might be underwhelming (the playable characters and many of the enemies are represented by hand-drawn, nicely animated sprites, but most everything else is polygonal, primitive and just doesn’t look very good  – it's especially disappointing when you consider that Arc System Works have produced stunning 2D games in the past), but even so, this is an excellent arcade-style run 'n gun and one of the finest games released this year.
 

4. DiRT 3


No Caption Provided
This is the first Colin McRae game I’ve bought since Colin McRae Rally 2.0 for the PlayStation, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise indeed. It looks and sounds amazing, the handling feels perfect (it has just the degree of realism I want from a game like this: it’s no Burnout, but it’s no hardcore racing simulator either) and the tracks, with their different surfaces and weather effects, are great: there are sunny desert courses, rainy forest roads, nighttime snow tracks and more, and drifting around corners is spectacular fun in all of them. The one thing I don’t love is the addition of Gymkhana challenges, where the goal isn’t to race but to jump, spin and drift for points, but thankfully that aspect of the game can for the most part be ignored.
 

5. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective


No Caption Provided
This game’s puzzles, while conceptually brilliant, are a bit simpler than I’d have liked, but the detailed 2D environments look gorgeous, the exaggerated character animations are wonderfully fluid, the soundtrack – a mix of jazz, rock and electronic music – is excellent, and the complex supernatural mystery story, which keeps you hooked by constantly introducing new shocking twists and wacky characters, is extremely well-thought-out. It's also one of this year's funniest games. Ghost Trick surprised me with its quality and has left me very excited for Shu Takumi’s next project, Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney.
 

6. Deathsmiles


No Caption Provided
I generally dislike horizontal shoot ‘em ups, but amongst the few I enjoy, Deathsmiles is probably my favourite. The Halloween theme is great, the music is terrific, and it’s really nice to have the ability to shoot both forward and backward. The scoring system never clicked with me and the game doesn’t feel as well-paced or exciting as Cave’s finest (mainly because of the way it’s structured: the player is given a lot of freedom when it comes to the order of the stages and the level of challenge, which is nice in a way, but as a result progression doesn’t feel as natural as in Cave’s other games), but dodging dense bullet patterns and blowing up enemies left and right is nevertheless a lot of fun.
 

7. Arcana Heart 3


No Caption Provided
This fighting game has fun characters designs (my personal favourite is Eko, a little girl who has a crudely drawn imaginary friend do all the fighting for her), an arcana system that effectively gives you hundreds of different fighters to choose from, and a unique homing mechanic that allows for exciting, fast-paced battles in which the characters go from exchanging blows on the ground one second to flying around high up in the air the next. The spritework is a bit rough and could use some improvement, but aside from that Arcana Heart 3 is terrific fun, and it’s one of my favourite fighting games.
 

8. The King of Fighters XIII


No Caption Provided
With its elaborate, richly animated backgrounds and gorgeous character sprites, this is a stunning game (as expected from SNK – they have always been masters of 2D, and their Metal Slug and The Last Blade titles remain some of the best-looking 2D games in existence) and hands down the most beautiful in the genre. It’s also a blast to play even for a low-level player like me: it’s fast, fluid and has a great selection of characters (though some of my favourites from past installments, like Vanessa and Jenet, are missing). If only SNK had the finances to give some of their other franchises the treatment they’ve given King of Fighters…
 

9. Dark Souls


No Caption Provided
Dark Souls brings an array of little changes, both good (the world, Lordran, feels larger and more naturally structured than Demon’s Souls’ Boletaria, and the dark fantasy aesthetic is more well-realized than before, with improved monster design and a larger variety of beautiful, somber environments) and bad (technical issues involving for example control responsiveness and framerate are considerably more frequent than in the previous game, and getting around is more tedious as you can’t warp between all the checkpoints), but more than anything else it’s more of what was in Demon’s Souls: an action game that offers a lot of freedom, a unique online system, level and enemy design that requires you to stay on your toes at all times, and an overall experience that is, despite a number of technical and mechanical issues, a very enjoyable one.
 

10. Gears of War 3


No Caption Provided
For much of its campaign, Gears of War 3 abandons the dark, gloomy look of its predecessors for a brighter, more colourful aesthetic that for the most part disappointed me. As technologically impressive as it is (the special effects and the lighting are at times jaw-dropping) it offers nothing on the level of, say, traversing the dark, deadly streets of Ephyra in the unforgettable second act of Gears of War, or journeying into the Locust Horde’s magnificent capital, the Nexus, in the fourth act of Gears of War 2. The combat feels like a step down, too: the Lambent are less varied and easier to deal with than the Locust they often replace, and the three AI comrades you always have with you do a bit too good of a job fighting enemies. It says a lot about the quality of the previous games, then, that Gears of War 3 is – despite its shortcomings – a gorgeous game that’s a lot of fun to play, and one of the very best cover-based third-person shooters currently on the market.

 

Top Five Pre-2011 Games I Didn't Play Until 2011 


  1. Sid Meier's Civilization V
  2. Rupupu Cube: Lup Salad Portable Matatabi
  3. Kororinpa
  4. Lost Planet 2
  5. The Adventures of Alundra

Top Ten 2012 Releases I'm Looking Forward To


  1. Akai Katana Shin
  2. Prey 2
  3. Tales of Graces f
  4. WipEout 2048
  5. SSX
  6. Hitman: Absolution
  7. Ninja Gaiden 3
  8. Dragon's Crown
  9. Assassin's Creed III (or whatever Ubisoft end up calling it)
  10. The Last Story
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Icemael

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#1  Edited By Icemael

I cannot help but look at this year with mixed emotions.  On the one hand, for me as a European who enjoys arcade games, this has been an absolutely stellar year with Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, Deathsmiles, The King of Fighters XIII and Arcana Heart 3 getting localized, Muchi Muchi Pork! and Pink Sweets being released in a region-free port compilation, and the excellent Hard Corps: Uprising coming out via Xbox Live Arcade. On the other hand, the list of games that failed to live up to my expectations is long, including Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Dead Space 2, Shadows of the Damned, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Bulletstorm in addition to many more that I'm not going to bother mentioning here. No year is free of letdowns, of course, but it's very rare for this many releases to disappoint me in a single year.


Anyhow, let's forget about the bummers for now. Here are my ten favourite 2011 releases, my five favourite pre-2011 releases I didn't end up checking out until this year, and the ten upcoming 2012 releases I'm most excited for. If you're American and some of the releases seem off it's probably because, as mentioned earlier, I'm European.


1. Dodonpachi Resurrection


No Caption Provided
This fantastic shoot ‘em up package features several excellent modes with loads of challenging bullet patterns and fun scoring systems that mix and match elements from a variety of games in the genre (I especially enjoy the scoring in Arrange A, which combines Daioujou and Daifukkatsu 1.5 and ends up being more fun than both). It also provides an incomparable audiovisual experience with superb music  – the Black Label soundtrack in particular is just out of this world  – and some of the best 2D graphics in the business (colourful, well-animated and extremely detailed, with countless dazzling special effects and beautifully rendered enemy sprites dominating the screen at virtually all times – the visual experience is second only to Vanillaware’s stuff in terms of overall quality, and unmatched in terms of intensity). Espgaluda II and Mushihime-sama Futari 1.5 remain my favourite games from Cave, but this has taken Daioujou’s place as my favourite Donpachi title, and it’s easily my favourite release of the year.

2. Muchi Muchi Pork! & Pink Sweets


No Caption Provided
Muchi Muchi Pork! is well-paced, very challenging and has great boss battles, but more importantly, it's got what is without question my favourite shoot ‘em up scoring system. Collecting pigs released by destroyed enemies, unleashing powerful lard attacks to fill the screen with giant, golden pig-head medals and then sucking them all up is incredibly addicting and immensely satisfying. Pink Sweets with its crazy rank system and unique bomb mechanic is pretty fun as well, but I honestly haven’t played much of it – whenever I pop this port collection in I inevitably end up spending most of my time playing Pork, even if my initial intention is to practice Sweets. The only real complaint I have is that the games didn’t get the graphical upgrade included in most of Cave’s other Xbox 360 ports. They would have looked great with hi-res sprites.
 

3. Hard Corps: Uprising


No Caption Provided
Hard Corps: Uprising builds on the foundation laid by the Contra games of old with a plethora of new special moves, and the result is the fastest run ‘n gun I have ever played. By mastering the dash, the vault, the dodge et al. one can zoom through the stages at lightning speed, breezing through enemies and other obstacles like they’re nothing, and it feels absolutely incredible. The presentation might be underwhelming (the playable characters and many of the enemies are represented by hand-drawn, nicely animated sprites, but most everything else is polygonal, primitive and just doesn’t look very good  – it's especially disappointing when you consider that Arc System Works have produced stunning 2D games in the past), but even so, this is an excellent arcade-style run 'n gun and one of the finest games released this year.
 

4. DiRT 3


No Caption Provided
This is the first Colin McRae game I’ve bought since Colin McRae Rally 2.0 for the PlayStation, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise indeed. It looks and sounds amazing, the handling feels perfect (it has just the degree of realism I want from a game like this: it’s no Burnout, but it’s no hardcore racing simulator either) and the tracks, with their different surfaces and weather effects, are great: there are sunny desert courses, rainy forest roads, nighttime snow tracks and more, and drifting around corners is spectacular fun in all of them. The one thing I don’t love is the addition of Gymkhana challenges, where the goal isn’t to race but to jump, spin and drift for points, but thankfully that aspect of the game can for the most part be ignored.
 

5. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective


No Caption Provided
This game’s puzzles, while conceptually brilliant, are a bit simpler than I’d have liked, but the detailed 2D environments look gorgeous, the exaggerated character animations are wonderfully fluid, the soundtrack – a mix of jazz, rock and electronic music – is excellent, and the complex supernatural mystery story, which keeps you hooked by constantly introducing new shocking twists and wacky characters, is extremely well-thought-out. It's also one of this year's funniest games. Ghost Trick surprised me with its quality and has left me very excited for Shu Takumi’s next project, Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney.
 

6. Deathsmiles


No Caption Provided
I generally dislike horizontal shoot ‘em ups, but amongst the few I enjoy, Deathsmiles is probably my favourite. The Halloween theme is great, the music is terrific, and it’s really nice to have the ability to shoot both forward and backward. The scoring system never clicked with me and the game doesn’t feel as well-paced or exciting as Cave’s finest (mainly because of the way it’s structured: the player is given a lot of freedom when it comes to the order of the stages and the level of challenge, which is nice in a way, but as a result progression doesn’t feel as natural as in Cave’s other games), but dodging dense bullet patterns and blowing up enemies left and right is nevertheless a lot of fun.
 

7. Arcana Heart 3


No Caption Provided
This fighting game has fun characters designs (my personal favourite is Eko, a little girl who has a crudely drawn imaginary friend do all the fighting for her), an arcana system that effectively gives you hundreds of different fighters to choose from, and a unique homing mechanic that allows for exciting, fast-paced battles in which the characters go from exchanging blows on the ground one second to flying around high up in the air the next. The spritework is a bit rough and could use some improvement, but aside from that Arcana Heart 3 is terrific fun, and it’s one of my favourite fighting games.
 

8. The King of Fighters XIII


No Caption Provided
With its elaborate, richly animated backgrounds and gorgeous character sprites, this is a stunning game (as expected from SNK – they have always been masters of 2D, and their Metal Slug and The Last Blade titles remain some of the best-looking 2D games in existence) and hands down the most beautiful in the genre. It’s also a blast to play even for a low-level player like me: it’s fast, fluid and has a great selection of characters (though some of my favourites from past installments, like Vanessa and Jenet, are missing). If only SNK had the finances to give some of their other franchises the treatment they’ve given King of Fighters…
 

9. Dark Souls


No Caption Provided
Dark Souls brings an array of little changes, both good (the world, Lordran, feels larger and more naturally structured than Demon’s Souls’ Boletaria, and the dark fantasy aesthetic is more well-realized than before, with improved monster design and a larger variety of beautiful, somber environments) and bad (technical issues involving for example control responsiveness and framerate are considerably more frequent than in the previous game, and getting around is more tedious as you can’t warp between all the checkpoints), but more than anything else it’s more of what was in Demon’s Souls: an action game that offers a lot of freedom, a unique online system, level and enemy design that requires you to stay on your toes at all times, and an overall experience that is, despite a number of technical and mechanical issues, a very enjoyable one.
 

10. Gears of War 3


No Caption Provided
For much of its campaign, Gears of War 3 abandons the dark, gloomy look of its predecessors for a brighter, more colourful aesthetic that for the most part disappointed me. As technologically impressive as it is (the special effects and the lighting are at times jaw-dropping) it offers nothing on the level of, say, traversing the dark, deadly streets of Ephyra in the unforgettable second act of Gears of War, or journeying into the Locust Horde’s magnificent capital, the Nexus, in the fourth act of Gears of War 2. The combat feels like a step down, too: the Lambent are less varied and easier to deal with than the Locust they often replace, and the three AI comrades you always have with you do a bit too good of a job fighting enemies. It says a lot about the quality of the previous games, then, that Gears of War 3 is – despite its shortcomings – a gorgeous game that’s a lot of fun to play, and one of the very best cover-based third-person shooters currently on the market.

 

Top Five Pre-2011 Games I Didn't Play Until 2011 


  1. Sid Meier's Civilization V
  2. Rupupu Cube: Lup Salad Portable Matatabi
  3. Kororinpa
  4. Lost Planet 2
  5. The Adventures of Alundra

Top Ten 2012 Releases I'm Looking Forward To


  1. Akai Katana Shin
  2. Prey 2
  3. Tales of Graces f
  4. WipEout 2048
  5. SSX
  6. Hitman: Absolution
  7. Ninja Gaiden 3
  8. Dragon's Crown
  9. Assassin's Creed III (or whatever Ubisoft end up calling it)
  10. The Last Story
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laserbolts

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#2  Edited By laserbolts

Damn I feel like an idiot due to the fact that I haven't heard of about half of the games listed in this. Interesting lists though. Also Gears!

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pweidman

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#3  Edited By pweidman

Interesting mix of games on your list.

BTW, I really disliked the Gymkhana events in DiRT 3 as well. In fact it stopped me from playing it. So, what events or modes are you, or did you play to avoid them? The main mode was just clogged with way too many of those. The rally racing's where it's at for me w/the DiRT franchise.

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Timing

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#4  Edited By Timing

Nice list. I don't know many of the games either but then again I'm also not an arcade game enthusiast like yourself.

I'm pleased to see at least someone else appreciated last year's Lost Planet 2. Since the review 'controversy' not many people have talked about it but I liked it a lot. Made number 10 on my list of last year.

As for this year, I might not make a list, since I've only really played two proper retail games so far (Dark Souls and Rayman Origins, both of which I thought were great). Aside from these two and a number of XBLA/PSN Games I mostly played either remakes/rereleases, namely Zelda OoT3D (still great) and ICO/Shadow (played properly for the first time; surprisingly disappointing) and games from last year (or 2009), namely RDR (great), Castlevania Lords of Shadow (good), 3D Dot Game Heroes (disappointing) and Zelda Spirit Tracks (disappointing).

Are you still looking to check out Rayman?

Also, this blog reminded me once again that I should really pick up Ghost Trick sometime.

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AhmadMetallic

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#5  Edited By AhmadMetallic

A lot of what I consider weird out-of-my-league games the sight of which gives me a stomach ache :P

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Icemael

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#6  Edited By Icemael
@pweidman: Everything else, basically. Rally, Rallycross, Landrush, Trailblazer -- everything except Gymkhana is a blast. Rally is probably my favourite event type.

@Timing: Yeah, Lost Planet 2 was a lot of fun. I played it after the big patch though, so I never had to deal with the checkpoint stuff everyone complained about.

I'm unsure about Rayman. I tried the demo and wasn't particularly impressed. I may pick it up at some point, but yeah, I dunno.
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Karl_Boss

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#7  Edited By Karl_Boss

I have a feeling you wish you were Japanese.

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Icemael

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#8  Edited By Icemael
@Unknown_Pleasures: Not really, no.
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IkariNoTekken

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#9  Edited By IkariNoTekken

Intriguing list. Never been great a Japanese shooters but I might try some of those.

Happy to hear that you think DoDonPachi Resurrection has a good soundtrack; even though I don't play all of the games I almost always listen to the soundtracks so I'll be checking that one out.

Haven't finished my GOTY stuff but Gears Of War 3 is right up there for me, so its nice to see it included.

On a side note I really need to get a DS at some point (last handheld was GBA) as I have a ton to DS titles catch up on, Ghost Trick being one of 'em.

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#10  Edited By GunstarRed

Your list is full of a bunch of games that I wanted to and have every intention of playing like Dodonpachi, King of Fighters and Arcana Heart. The problem with all of those games is that they drop in price so quickly that it's hard to spend money on them at release. The Arcana Heart special edition is about £15 which is ridiculous.

I did play Deathsmiles though and like you I am far more fond of the vertical scrolling shooters. My favourite thing about that game is probably that it has a killer cow.

I also liked Hard Corps a lot and while I really don't like the look of the players I think some of the art and animation on the enemies is great. I had a bit of a problem with the difficulty. I haven't got the time to figure out how to play through the game on Arcade and rising , while a nice addition requires far too much time to buy the upgrades of any worth.

I think RAAM's shadow does a pretty good job of recreating the more horror-like elements of the first game. If you haven't played that you should consider it.

Ghost Trick is awesome!

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Icemael

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#11  Edited By Icemael
@GunstarRed: I can see waiting a couple of months for a huge price drop being tempting, but for me, if it's a game I'm excited about, I just can't resist getting it on release.

RAAM's Shadow looked kind of lame in the Quick Look. Slowly plodding around with RAAM, obliterating everything you see without difficulty seems to me like something that would get old after about 30 seconds. Is there a lot of that?