BlazeHedgehog (Level 22)

 
  
So the SSX 2012 demo dropped today. It's pretty cool, I guess. You can see me running through the demo for my first time in the video above (or if that doesn't work for some reason, click here), and at the end I play a little bit of SSX3 (and fail pretty bad at it - I was pretty rusty, and the controls for SSX 2012 were throwing me off a bit on top of that). 
 
Tricks are way easier to pull off than in previous SSX games - you'll be doing wild spins and flips in no time. It's way more forgiving with what it'll let you successfully land, but it's definitely not "easy" - if you genuinely goof up, the game will fault you for it in a big way. SSX3's "tap the button to get up faster" system isn't here, so you could end up tumbling down a pretty significant chunk of the mountain before your rider gets up and back on his board.
 
The most immediate change is the trick system - by default, it controls similar to Skate's "trick stick" system. Traditional SSX controls usually have you jump with the A button, boost with the X button, and use the d-pad for flips and spins. Spins and flips had to be pre-loaded, too, almost like an ATV racing game. The new SSX has the same "flick the stick" concept for everything from jumps to flips and grabs, though it lets you use the face buttons, too. R trigger is for boost, and L trigger is for snapping to grindable ridges. The tutorial at the start begins by mentioning there's a "classic controls" option for SSX veterans. too.
 
Achieving "Tricky" status is a lot easier, too, but by that same vein, you LOSE it a lot faster, too. In the single race event in the demo, you can achieve and lose "Tricky" status a dozen times if you can't keep a combo going. It's all about more rewards and more risks. 
 
Leaderboard integration is cool. Without even having to tell it, SSX downloaded and had me face off against time trial ghosts from guys on my friends list. I really appreciate stuff like that, and more games need to adopt this kind of system. I can imagine something like Trackmania really benefiting from this concept - but by that same token, I can see this being the kind of feature that only really thrives on the consoles. I have Need For Speed Hot Pursuit for the PC, and my Autolog is a ghost town because the game has its own separate friends list from Steam or Games For Windows Live. For leaderboard systems like SSX's to thrive, there needs to be more cross-pollination between friends lists, because the bigger pool you can pull from, the better.
 
The only major issue I have with the SSX demo is rider controls. Tricking's easy as pie, but steering your dude when he's carving up the snow is squirrelly and sluggish. You might see in the video that I'm constantly zig-zagging back and forth a lot, and that's because it was difficult for me to get a bead on how tight I needed to turn to get my guy to react. That might not be an issue once I get used to it, but for now it feels laggy and I don't like it.
 
The second major issue, of course, is the fact that for a demo already so deeply hooked in to leaderboard stuff, they make you watch the stupid trailer and do the five minute long tutorial every single time you boot up the game. I realize this is a demo and all, but it is basically the world's longest and worst "BUY THE FULL GAME!" nag screen. That's not helping your product, EA. If you're going to give me reasons to play your demo more than once, don't make it such a frustrating, tedious endeavor to get back in to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will just not shut the hell up about the Xbox 360 dashboard. There was an update yesterday morning, and I feel like I have to say something about it, given that my previous statements on the subject were, to quote, " this is bad enough that it almost seems like you're deliberately sabotaging yourselves, Microsoft."
 
Somebody out there was listening. To me specifically? Probably not. But I was hardly the only voice. While the display issues with certain apps does not seem to have been corrected, yesterday's Xbox Dashboard patch has seemingly redesigned a significant portion of the Game Marketplace. 
 
What a world of difference! One of my main complaints of the old game marketplace was the fact that icons were all a random jumble of unrelated garbage - you had some icons that were like Windows icons in green squares, you had some icons that were random unrelated clip-art, and there were too many "clicks" standing in the way of you getting to the categorization options you wanted to get to. Now, everything makes a lot more sense. We lose sorting options like "Most Popular" and sorting by Genre, but now Xbox Live Arcade, Games On Demand, and Xbox Indie games are out in the open, no longer held hostage by the weird Parkour Girl. When icons deviate from the standard Xbox "green background and white pictograph" image, they're showing the best-selling products in their section - Castle Crashers, Halo Reach, and (ugh) FortressCraft. It's smart, it's focused, and it's the way it should've been to begin with (though given Microsoft's deal with Mojang for Minecraft on Xbox Live Arcade, I have to wonder how they feel about FortressCraft getting billing like that). Similar improvements have been made across the rest of the Marketplace:
 
Unlike with the games tab, where we lost sorting options in favor of exposing certain game types better, the add-ons section loses nothing but gains a ton of readability. System functions are clearly identified and grouped together, though the "subscriptions" tab is still off by its little lonesome there on the right - but I can't imagine a good place to put that myself, so it's fine. Again, this is exactly the way the dashboard should have looked when the update launched. It finally makes the whole thing feel cohesive; there's no more stopping and having to think about what might be an advertisement or a promotion - it's all properly organized and completely obvious, even at a glance. 
 
Of course, I don't have to go through every section of the game marketplace, because it's all like this now. Microsoft deserves at least a little pat on the back; they took what used to be a slight trainwreck and made it workable. It's still not quite as good as it could be, of course, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

So I just had a near death experience.
 
There were two major things on my list of "PC hardware I need to replace": My mouse, and my headset. I had bought a super cheap replacement mouse almost a year ago, figuring it didn't really matter if I only spent $10 or $15 on a mouse, because I didn't need extra buttons or higher resolution. It just needed to click and I'd be fine. Of course, within 11 months, the left mouse button was acting up - 50% of the time I'd click, it would register as a double click. This made editing video or doing level design in a game pretty challenging. I decided that next time around, I'd buy something more expensive, and after three weeks of bashing my head against a wall as to why Newegg wasn't letting me complete a Paypal transaction, I finally ordered a Logitech G400. In a twist of fate, the very same day, I would discover I won a Razer gaming headset from 1up.com. My old headset was starting to have connection problems - moving my head a certain way would result in my earpiece being blasted with static, and anybody hearing me speak could hear it come through on the mic, too. Winning a $130 headset not only solved that problem, but provided me with a significant upgrade over my $25 Microsoft Lifechat.
 
The mouse installed without issue, save for the fact that it's way, way, way more sensitive than my old mouse. I've been tweaking settings since installing it last night, trying to find a sweet spot that feels like my old mouse did. The downside is, of course, that I've now gotten a taste for a high resolution mouse - if this one breaks, I'll never be able to go back to a cheaper mouse ever again. I have permanently upgraded to a $50 mouse for the rest of my life.
 
I was, obviously, most excited for the headset. I've never experienced surround-sound headphones before, and I was eager to see just how clear the microphone was.Taking it out of the box, I was impressed with the look and feel of the headset. It feels very sturdy, the earphones are plush and very comfortable, and the USB cable appears to be some kind of braided fiber instead of a plastic cord. It looks expensive, it feels expensive, it even smells expensive. It even comes with a 20 page, full-color "quick start guide" manual. It also comes with a little cardboard slip, declaring:
 

Congratulations, there is no turning back.
We are the Cult of Razer, and our membership includes some of the greatest players the world has ever seen.

The note ends with a signature in neon green ink by one "RazerGuy". I'm not joking. That's not a pseudonym or some kind of nickname he goes by in addition to his "real name". The only name provided on this card is for "RazerGuy".
 
Installing the headset was the first crazy ordeal - there's no less than seven individual drivers for this thing, and I don't even know what half of them are for. I'd assume there's separate drivers for audio out (earphones) and audio in (microphone), and probably drivers for the colored lights, but beyond that, I have no idea. The second crazy ordeal is that this headset does not appear to function without the Razer Synapse 2.0 software running at all times, and, even after you install the headset drivers, Synapse has to download a whole mess of other definition files for your headset. Even crazier: Razer Synapse 2.0 requires a username and password to Razer's online service. The program starts up with Windows and logs you in over the internet just like an instant messenger client would, except it's just there to provide you with device settings. Apparently this is because Razer lets you store your peripheral config in the cloud, but it still seems absolutely bizarre to me. If I don't have a connection to the internet, can I still use my headset? The other downside to this is that if you unplug your Razer headset, a huge Synapse window will immediately pop up and whine, "TO USE RAZER SYNAPSE 2.0 PLEASE CONNECT A SYNAPSE CERTIFIED DEVICE.". The whole thing seems really unnecessary.
 
As for the headset itself, sound quality is, as to be expected, very good. Sound is so crisp it almost feels like it hurts my ears at times - which lead me to turn off the built-in equalizer in the Synapse software. Surround-sound wasn't quite as revolutionary as I expected it to be; it's practically unnoticeable in most games. Out of four or so games I tried ( Sonic Generations, Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD, Mirror's Edge and The Crysis Singleplayer Demo), the only one I noticed surround sound effects in was Sam, and those were very subtle (in a stage with a waterfall, there was a subtle change in the way the flowing water sounded depending on whether or not I was facing it). I unfortunately never got to try the microphone out, because the last game I tried - Crysis - started the circus that has become the last hour of my life, and it's all thanks to this $130 headset.
 
Once the EA logo on the Crysis demo went away, the headset completely stopped receiving sound. Closing Crysis, I discovered that all of Windows was now complaining that there was no sound devices available to receive audio. Though the Synapse software was still technically functional, the headset itself appeared to have crashed, so I unplugged the gold-plated USB connector and plugged it back in. 

TO USE RAZER SYNAPSE 2.0 PLEASE CONNECT A SYNAPSE CERTIFIED DEVICE.

I wait. And wait. And wait some more. Shouldn't you be detecting it already?

Windows has detected an unknown device connected to PORT 2. This device is not functioning properly. If reconnecting the device does not work, please replace the device.

Uh oh. Unplugging my gamepad, I put the headset in to USB Port 1. Synapse recognizes it!
 
But won't let me move the volume past 0%. I force the Synapse task to terminate, unplug and re-plug the headset back in again. At the very least, Windows isn't complaining about a lack of sound devices anymore, but there's no audio going to anything, anywhere. I pop open the Control Panel to see where Windows is sending this audio, when the next crazy ordeal starts.

Windows cannot find C:\Windows\Rundll32.exe 
Make sure you typed the name correctly and try again.

Um. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Rundll32.exe is a pretty critical part of Windows. And I know for a fact that the control panel was working just fine before installing the headset and Razer Synapse, because as I stated before: I've been fiddling with mouse sensitivity options for the last 48 hours. I know exactly what I installed between the last time I used the Control Panel earlier this afternoon and now, and it was the headset. I send Razer Tech Support a calm, reasonable email explaining my problem.

To: Razer Tech Support
Subject: WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU GUYS DONE TO MY SYSTEM

Well, mostly reasonable.  I replaced Rundll32.exe with one located in another folder in Windows and found the control panel seemed to be working just fine again.
 
But the cavalcade of comedy doesn't stop there. Before Synapse 2.0 installed, it smartly created a System Restore Point. Whether this is because the only way to uninstall it would be a system restore (as is the case with Windows Media Player, etc.) or not I did not discover - but what I did discover is that trying to restore to the point made by Synapse simply caused Windows to freeze. I've never used Windows System Restore before, so as one could imagine, I figured my system was hosed. Thankfully, Windows booted up just fine, though it did notify me that the restore failed. 
 
Also? Rundll32.exe was missing. Again. Even though I had replaced it.
 
Thankfully, Windows makes a system restore point once a night, every night, and keeps those restore points up to 90 days. I simply restored to the point made last night, after installing my mouse. And it worked! But Rundll32.exe was STILL missing. If there was one silver lining, I copied Rundll32.exe in to the correct folder a third time, and after a couple of reboots it FINALLY seems to be staying put - but I have no idea why it wouldn't be restored with the restore point.
 
Obviously, one can imagine I'm hesitant to re-install this headset again. I'll wait and see what Razer tech support has to say about the issue, and then see what else I can do with it. It is, after all, technically brand new. It was used for maybe all of 45 minutes. The "Limited Edition Lightsaber" code for The Old Republic hasn't even been redeemed yet. 
 
Even though I technically got the headset for free, I can't help but feel a little crushed that my experience with it had to be THIS awful. Imagine if somebody actually paid the appropriate amount of money for this thing and went through all the troubles I have - I'd be furious. Instead, I simply get to be sad.

(This could probably go on Tested, but nobody would read it if I posted it over there because I have zero followers on Tested.)
 
So I complained a lot about the new Xbox Dashboard update. I felt it emphasized advertising space too much over genuine features, and actively obscured certain functions, with a plethora of too many and often unorganized sub-categories. Some of you out there felt I was nitpicking or were otherwise incorrect, but the fact that there are still people out there who can't figure out where Xbox Originals or Indie Games went (to the point where somebody made a game about it) says it all, I think.
 
 
But I reserved my opinion for a lot of the 360's apps. I'd heard some people complain about the changes made to Netflix, but as somebody who doesn't use Netflix Instant a terribly large amount, I found the new Netflix app to be something of an improvement - it better exposes more information about what you want to watch, and brings up a lot of similar content to watch after you're finished with the current video. But what I was always excited about was the Youtube app. I spend a lot of time on Youtube - a worrying amount, infact. I'm subscribed to more than two hundred channels. When I want to watch a video while I do whatever, I can always find something on Youtube. The problem, of course, is running Youtube on the same monitor as where I'm doing everything else. I just can't do it. I'm always minimizing everything else to just watch Youtube.
 
If Youtube was on another screen in the same room, it would be a lot easier to multitask. This is technically something I already do; by way of a plugin for Firefox, I can download the MP4 source file from a Youtube video, throw it up on my network, and watch it through the Xbox 360 that way. A Youtube app would eliminate the middle man and save me some time and a little bit of HDD space. 
 
 
I've been using the app for over a week now... or, at least, have been trying to use the app. The first thing about it I noticed, which won't be apparent by the above image taken from my capture card, is that all of the Xbox 360 video apps (Netflix, Youtube, The Today Show, etc.) all have slightly busted aspect ratio scaling. I have my Xbox setup with a D-SUB connector over VGA and the widescreen image seems to be incorrect scaled, giving the display a weird, somewhat smudged appearance. It's especially noticeable watching GiantBomb videos for the times when they bring up the Xbox dashboard on camera and everything looks squashed. This is a problem only limited to these video apps - games display at the correct aspect ratio, as does everything else about the dashboard. It only effects apps like Netflix and Youtube. In the long run you kind of end up getting used to it, but it's still something that shouldn't be happening.
 

The next major issue is how the Youtube app handles subscription content. As I said earlier, I am subscribed to well over 200 Youtube channels. Not all of them update regularly, and a pretty decent percentage of them haven't updated in more than 6 months. I keep them around anyway, because one day they might start posting videos again. On the Youtube website, managing such a large number of subscriptions is easy, thanks to a page that shows all of the most recent videos from your subscriptions grouped together in an easy-to-view grid. This makes it simple to get to what's new and watch it. On the Xbox Youtube App, trying to manage your subscriptions is pretty much worthless - you're simply presented with a jumbled list of Youtube channels you're subscribed to. Nothing anywhere in the interface tells you which channels have updated recently - only how many views their channel has, and how many videos they have uploaded - it's up to you to go through and manually check each and every channel individually for new videos. It's totally useless.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the number of subscriptions its willing to list cuts off at 100. If you have more than 100 Youtube subscriptions, you're out of luck. This wouldn't be a problem if the list sorted by date, as I'd be viewing content from the 100 most active channels I'm subscribed to. But it's not. It's not alphabetically sorted, it's not chronologically sorted - I don't know what criteria is used to figure out which channels make it in to the 100 I'm allowed to view, but I do know that it's annoying that there are some Youtube channels that are essentially gone forever. 
 

Perhaps knowing ahead of time this would be a problem, Youtube implemented a fairly thick-headed solution in the form of the "Watch Later" playlist. "Watch Later" is like any other playlist, but it's meant to be accessible across multiple platforms and easy to get to, and I guess it is - to the point where you're given the option to add videos to the "Watch Later" list first, over other things like adding videos to favorites or other playlists. I decided to play along, and added 20-30 videos to "Watch Later" with the intent of letting them play on the Xbox. Unfortunately, this feature is a little bit broken. My first time trying to use it, for instance, was met with an error message from the Xbox that my "Watch Later" playlist was empty - when, obviously, I knew better. When the feature finally started working again, I discovered that all the videos I wanted to watch were suddenly buffering every 30 seconds, even though watching those exact same videos on my PC not even a few feet away was smooth and problem-free. Both systems are on the same router, both systems are using a wired connection, but for some reason, video constantly hitches up on the Xbox. And while not exactly a problem per-say, there is absolutely no way to manage the "Watch Later" playlist on the Xbox - even if you finish watching a given video, it'll stay on the "Watch Later" playlist indefinitely until you use a PC to manually edit and remove videos you've already seen.
 

Perhaps the worst part of this is that you can't complain to anybody in a position of authority about it; contacting Xbox Support about these issues simply results in them redirecting you to Youtube's community support forum, which may as well not even exist - it's hidden away in a part of Youtube that nobody ever visits, and almost nobody on the Youtube staff pays any attention to anything said there. The key word here is "Community" - it's basically a place for Youtube users to complain to each other and figure out solutions to the problems they're experiencing, because Youtube themselves certainly isn't going to do anything about it. It's a poor substitute for real customer service from a company that really wants to project itself as being "hands on" with their users (and is, instead, completely deaf to the majority of their complaints).

Of course, what is Microsoft's problem is the fact that Youtube, much like Netflix and Hulu, is exclusive to Xbox Live Gold users. While you can go on about adding value to Xbox Live Gold and whatnot, it's a serious issue when I'm in the middle of watching a video on my Xbox on the other screen, boot up a Games For Windows Live game on my PC, and get kicked out of the app on the Xbox because I can't be signed in to the same account on both the PC and the Xbox simultaneously. I have to choose - do I want online connectivity on my PC ( which some games can't function without), or do I want to keep watching video on my Xbox? The answer is that I shouldn't have to choose, and I should be able to do both at the same time. The only other solution is to create a PC-specific gamertag, but then we run in to the problem of a number of GFWL games being registered under the same Gamertag I have for Xbox Live and pretty soon we're talking an unnecessary headache over the crippling ineptitude that is Microsoft's handling of these kinds of issues.

If Microsoft really wants to sell the Xbox 360 as some kind of "set top box for all your entertainment media needs", these are the kinds of issues they are going to have to address as soon as possible, because the longer they wait, the harder it's going to be to change the system.

Game of the Year articles are always tough for me to write. With my rapidly growing backlog crushing down upon me, I find that I do not play very many games in the year of their release. This becomes a problem at the end of the year when everybody's gathering together their "Best of 200X" lists, because hey, news flash: I only just finished Bayonetta last month. So, as some people tend to do, I'm just going to write whatever. Sure, I'll focus on what few 2011 releases I have played, but I'm just going to sum up 2011 as a whole for me. So without further adieu...
 

Best 2011 Release I Still Need To Play But Haven't

BASTION

So, hey, I know this is GiantBomb and all, so of course I've heard a lot about what a good game Bastion is. A lot of that was also reciprocated in other publications, who sang praise for the game almost as loudly. Even my own friends are telling me that I need to play Bastion. But here's my problem: I have this crippling disease known as "Late To The Party"-itus. For as long as I can remember, I've never played games when they are hot on everyone's lips. Perhaps it's a weird, deep-seated psychological fear that I'll be caught up in some kind of zeitgeist and will have problems forming my own opinion, instead simply parroting what others are feeling (this has actually happened, and I personally find it distressing when I realize it has). There's also the simple fact that, financially, I'm usually behind the curve on a lot of stuff. While everybody was raving about how amazing Half-Life was, I was only just discovering DooM, and to a lesser extent, Quake. I didn't own a Playstation 2 until sometime in 2006. The counter to this, of course, is that I already own Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, and simply owning it means the most difficult hurdle in wanting to play Bastion has already been cleared. Instead of writing this list, I could be playing it right now - but I'm not. And I might not get to it for a while. Because if there's one thing worse than "Late To The Party"-itus, it's having 90 games all with save files that read "Total Play Time: 20 minutes". I'm not going to start Bastion and then forget about it in the vast ocean that is my backlog; when I sit down to play that game, I'm going to devote as much of my undivided attention to it as possible. Unfortunately, it may be awhile.

• RUNNER-UPS: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Saints Row The Third

Best Game I Beat In 2011 That Wasn't Released In 2011

BAYONETTA

This is actually a fairly difficult category when you consider it: Do I wuss out and list one of those timeless classics I find myself replaying annually, like Half-Life, Donkey Kong Country, or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night? Or do I pick something legitimately fresh, that I haven't been playing and replaying for the better part of a decade? Well, if you really want to read me ramble on about any of those other games, I'm sure you could probably dig up something somewhere about it. So, instead, let's talk about why it took me roughly 11 months to finish Bayonetta: It goes without saying, but Bayonetta is as amazing as it is exhausting. Everybody likes to reference back to that old Spinal Tap joke of how something can be dialed to "11" - well, Bayonetta tweaks that dial so hard it snaps clean off, and then throws it to the ground and stomps on it in those boots with the guns on the heel. After a certain point, that sustained level of completely over-the-top insanity wears out something inside of your brain and you have to go take a rest. Somewhere in the last quarter of the game Bayonetta stops having "levels" in the traditional sense and transforms in to kind of a non-stop boss rush. While frequently awe-inspiring, it also proved to be very draining in equal measure. Every few months, I'd see Bayonetta on the shelf - spend a couple hours with her, and then, completely spent, take a break to let my batteries "recharge". Rinse, repeat. Eventually, I just dug in and resolved to finish the game, frayed reflexes or not - and with a knowing tease, even then, Bayonetta pushed me to my absolute limit. It's one of those extremely rare games that can be punishingly difficult in a way that drives you to play better. Bayonetta is completely absurd, barely makes any sense, and openly basks in these facts with nary a hint of shame. And do not be put off by the game's sexualized aesthetic; like everything else in Bayonetta, the character's own sex appeal is nothing but another out-of-its-mind joke. If you haven't played Bayonetta yet, you should probably track down a copy.

• RUNNER-UPS: Sonic Colors, Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land

Best Multiplayer

LEFT4DEAD 2

I don't play multiplayer games very often, because the dire state of so-called "pub games" is something that I think should always be avoided. I never saw the appeal of climbing to the top of a leaderboard with a bunch of strangers, especially when you run in to that 12 year old who swears you must be hacking (by, ironically, swearing at you) - or who himself must be hacking for being able to headshot you with a knife of all things from the other side of the map. Multiplayer is so much more engaging when you're doing it with people you actually know. For the vast majority of my multiplayer "career", I was fortunate enough to maybe have one or two friends interested in playing multiplayer games with me - and let me tell you: Capture the flag just doesn't work with a team of three. That all changed late last year when I started getting invited to games of Left4Dead 2 by some guys on a forum I was a part of. Before I knew it, I was playing Left4Dead 2 with these guys just about every night for days. Days turned in to weeks. Weeks turned in to months. We were still playing Left4Dead 2. Unlike something like Phantasy Star Online, which would draw in a whole community only until the "fad" wore off a short time later, Left4Dead 2 became something of a nightly routine for me. I've not only grown attached to the game itself, I've grown attached to the people I play it with, in some weird way. It doesn't hurt that the game itself is absolutely fantastic; if you haven't ever really experienced Left4Dead's Versus mode proper, you haven't actually played the game, as far as I'm concerned. For the longest time, I didn't actually like Left4Dead, and that's namely because the game has a limited appeal when all you're doing is playing the game's vanilla "campaign" mode. It's not until you've got a full server of 8 flesh and blood human beings all trying to kill each other that Left4Dead really starts to "make sense". Valve may advertise the game's singleplayer and co-op game modes, but those are like trying to play Rock Band 3 without a plastic guitar: functional, but entirely missing the point. There is absolutely nothing else like this game on the market, and I really hope that Christmas Rush 2011 hasn't killed off "the crew"s resolve to play more Left4Dead, because it's been about two weeks since we last played and I'm starting to have withdrawal shakes.

• RUNNER-UPS: Team Fortress 2, Trackmania Nations

Biggest Disappointment

COSTUME QUEST

If none of you mind, I'm going to count this as a 2011 release due to the PC version, despite the fact it originally came out (and I played it) in 2010. Regardless, I feel like one of ten people on planet earth who did not "get" Costume Quest. Sure, aesthetically, it was charming as hell - as Double-Fine games tend to be. But dig even an inch below the surface and Costume Quest is a painfully simplistic game, even by the uncomplicated standards set by the very RPGs it is paying tribute to. I could tolerate the ultra-basic Super Mario RPG-esque interactive battle system, but what really broke Costume Quest for me is when I'd finish a "dungeon" and the game would send me to the equivalent of the next town, only to find it largely populated by the exact same NPCs with the exact same mini-games as the place I'd just come from. It was fun and endearing for maybe an hour, but then the repetition sets in and all of the cute artwork and clever writing in the world could not save me from the crushing boredom of having to go door to door for candy, trade cards with other kids, and bob for apples yet again. I actually resolved myself to finish it for Halloween this year, and could not muster the effort to even launch the game once. What's worse is they had the guts to release Costume Quest DLC that, judging by trailers and other media I've seen, once again recycles everything all over again for what must be the fifth or sixth time - except now there's snow everywhere and it's vaguely Christmas themed! Oooh! Aaah! Ugh.

• RUNNER-UPS: Duke Nukem Forever, Pokemon Black/White

The Game I Really Need To Go Back To

DEAD ISLAND

My memories of Dead Island are a blur of zombies being kicked to death by four assholes who didn't really have much of an agenda beyond "Hey, what's over there?" It was a single day of complete madness, and while some of my friends didn't seem too thrilled with the game, I thought it was cool. I think. Maybe. It's hard to tell, what with all of the zombie kicking. But, just like that, it vanished in to the aether of my towering videogame backlog, never to be heard from again. It wasn't until recently when I was called upon to co-star in some footage for Nitrobeard.com's Game Of The Year video content that it dawned on me: "Oh yeah, Dead Island! There's like, quests and stuff! There's actually a game in here beyond the zombie kicking simulator. I should really get back to that." The question is, do I try and get the band back together (coordinating a multiplayer game with the original four chuckleheads can be like pulling teeth at times), try and find some new recruits (the Steam sale holds plenty of promise in that regard), or just go it alone? I'd love to play Dead Island with more people, certainly, but I've always been more of a gets-invited than a sends-invites kind of guy. Given that I'll probably never get invited to another game of Dead Island, maybe I should just start a singleplayer character. Singleplayer characters certainly have their benefits; there's a greater opportunity to totally immerse yourself in a world, take things at your own pace and to stop and smell the... well, stopping to smell anything in Dead Island is probably a bad idea on multiple levels - but you get the point. Or maybe Dead Island can just sit on my HDD for another six months while I wallow in indecision. Hasn't hurt anything yet!

• RUNNER-UPS: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Game Of The Year 2011 Runner-Up

SONIC GENERATIONS

Hey. Have you watched my Sonic Generations video review yet? You probably should, given that I spent three grueling weeks putting it together. Long story short: Sonic Generations is a great game. Better than Sonic has been in over a decade. Some of its ancillary content is pretty weak, but the core meat of the game - the part you really care about playing through - is the strongest it's ever been. Somebody at Sonic Team finally figured out how to design levels for Sonic in 3D. Actually, scratch that - somebody at Sonic Team finally figured out how to actually learn from their mistakes for a change. Long gone are the days of games like Sonic Heroes that simply rehash the worst elements of their predecessors. Sonic Generations takes all of the best ideas from Sonic 4, Sonic Unleashed, and Sonic Colors, and throws them in to a blender set to "purée". The end result is a game that does not punish you for making the choice to slow down. Rather than expect the player to perfect some amazing high-speed death gauntlet their first time through the level, Sonic Generations provides plenty of ways in its level design for psychotic speedrunners and more leisurely players to co-exist in the same space together, and as simple as something like that sounds to accomplish, it represents a major step forward for this franchise. Whether you want to rip through a stage at 100mph or take it easy, Sonic Generations has a little something for everybody to enjoy. This is the real deal, folks. No human-on-hedgehog kissing, no overly-serious plot, no werehogs, no fishing. Just blue hedgehogs and brightly colored environments as far as the eye can see. May the Sonic cycle never darken this doorstep ever again.

• HONORABLE MENTIONS: Minecraft, Left4Dead 2

My 2011 Game Of The Year

PORTAL 2

I'm sort of in awe at just how completely and utterly perfect Portal 2 is. It nails everything with a kind of exacting, pin-point accuracy that you just don't see in very many games, if at all. Often hilarious, sometimes emotionally resonant, Portal 2's storyline is, at least to me, the single best piece of game writing ever put to paper (or otherwise). What few characters are in the game are sharply defined, totally unique, and an absolute joy to be around (relatively speaking to how much some of them want to kill you). Puzzles are just devious enough to cultivate that magical "Ah-ha," moment and the game knows exactly when to pull back and let the player explore and when to buckle down and teach you exactly what to do. Everybody can go on about how crazy Saint's Row is, how long and involved Skyrim is, but neither of those games are so perfectly and expertly executed on like Portal 2 is. There is no fat, no fluff, no filler. Portal 2 is exactly the game it wants to be with no compromises. The only real problem is how Valve follows it up - you can only raise the bar so high before you become eternally trapped in its shadow; and Portal 2 is good enough that I think there's a possibility it may be "that game" for Valve. This is their "Thriller", their "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial". At best we can hope for a Pixar-like scenario where we somehow managed to get The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up all one after another - but we eventually had to meet the crushing despair of Cars 2, and Valve's going to stumble at some point. Regardless of my crazy ramblings on the matter, I know one thing for sure: I am dying to see what these guys do next.
 

And that wraps up my Game of the Year stuff for this year, I suppose. I could probably keep going, making up awards to give out (like, say, Best Fangame, or at least the Best and Worst Xbox Live Indie games), but I've been at this for three hours already and I'm ready to call it a night. So I guess I will see you guys in 2012? Sure, why not. See you in 2012!