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CanuckEh

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GOTY 2011

You know, because why not? Websites love lists. At least they love putting ads between the lists that make me wait a certain handful of seconds. So here's my rushed best of 2011-because-I-ought-to-make-the-deadline-to-submit-this-list list of my favourite games of the year. Granted, my top ten has a lot of populist, fan-favorite games, but there's also a handful of less well-known titles that probably deserve some kind of recognition that won't get it because everyone is too busy tugging on dragon tails in Skyrim. Alas.

Two notes. One is that I never got to play Uncharted 3, Dead Space 2, The Witcher 2, The Old Republic or any modern military shooter released this year. Two, this list is a fucking lie because my real game of the year is Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, a game that I think is relatively popular on this website. Because as good as the Skyrims and Arkham Citys and The Thirds of the world are, the 130 hours I gave Teddie, Chie, Yukiko, Kanji and whatshisname is more than all of those combined. Anyways...

List items

  • After much internal struggle, I decided to put Mortal Kombat at the top because someone has to. Also, it's the one game I kept revisiting time after time throughout the year. They figured out how to make a fighting game that newcomers can wrap their minds around and still be worthy of Evo tournament contention. And there's the point where Shang Tsung proclaims that one's soul will soon be his. I think the world is ready to declare a fighting game the best of 2011.

  • The unofficial-but-undisputed Giantbomb Game of the Year, despite what the people working at Giantbomb may claim. It's hard to explain why this game is great without divulging into spoilers, but well, shit happens in this game at the expense of common sense, and to the benefit of the universe as a whole.

  • Because Batman punches a shark. Repeatedly.

  • I read a news story recently that claimed that Google Chrome has surprised some version of Internet Explorer as the single most used browser. I told my brother it was because Bastion runs on Internet Explorer. He nodded in agreement. Bastion is a game so mighty it has major ramifications in the web design realm.

  • Dammit, someone has to bring up All Stars. THQ San Diego figured out something the actual WWE hasn't; that wrestling should be simple, wacky, stupid and fun. Get some friends together and let everyone fling off the top rope and do spinning 20-feet elbow drops of glory. This game is so good, it convinced at least one friend to give wrestling a shot and go to a Smackdown taping. Female, no less.

  • Infinitely better than it had any right to be, largely for what it doesn't have. There's no Boomerang, no Gannon, no absence of consequence in the larger Zelda fiction, and only a small modicum of fetch-questing. Instead, there's a pretty solid story with interesting characters, great level design and strong incorporation of motion controls. At the least, it's the second-best Zelda game made to date.

  • Here's another game that turned out better than it had any right to be. It's a blatant one-trick-pony that gets every dollar and dime out of that trick. You can switch from one car to another in the city, and deal with a surprising variety of comical, charming and proud-to-be contrived situations dealing with this. The writing is also fantastic.

  • This is here more by default of how much I liked Marvel vs Capcom 3, and this being a biologically superior version of that game. No matter how you spin it, famous spandex-laden superheroes thrashing each other with laser beams bigger than your television is a spectacle in of itself. And I can forgive the whole Ultimate business Capcom is pulling off; I just don't plan to ever buy a first-run Capcom game again.

  • So an assortment of friends and family were elated to see that the old CD-ROM trivia games from our youth got revived in an update that changed little aside from the pop-culture references. The game still asks about quantum physics, it's just that now the game wonders what happens if Lady Gaga dances at the speed of light instead of Boys 2 Men.

  • And barely edging out Skyrim is a game about Russian stacking dolls fighting child labour. That sentence alone should explain why I'm putting it above that wacky dragon epic. Also, this has things Skyrim doesn't have; proper uppercuts and minor toots.

  • Finally, here's that ever popular cheese wheel-hucking simulation. Even I have to sit here and say "yup, that's a pretty good game alright." Skyrim does let me wander around town and deprive all of the townsfolk of their coins and keys, replacing them with a few vials of spider poison. You can't do that in Persona 4.

  • A game that I think most of the modern world ignored on account of how most of the modern world has been conditioned to ignore anything related to Bloodrayne. Pity, because this here is a really stylized, really precise, slightly snarky and fairly bloody action game that sits somewhere between Devil May Cry and something from Ark System Works. Not a bad hybrid of Japanese designs for a game coming out of Cali.

  • I know most people hated this specific part of the game, but I was thoroughly amused in the part of the game where Garcia repeatedly yells "Taste My Big Boner" at the behemoths whom are falling victim to his penile projectiles. It's such a perfect, probably-unintentional rip of bad use of sound files in video games.

  • After leaving my Kinect in my closet for months, the device exacted revenge on me by responding poorly to my attempts to aim and fire at enemies in The Gunstringer. Re-calibrations were frequent, unpleasant and unwelcome, and I think it mistook my hand for my crotch a couple of times. But for the bad FMV, the great ending, the crocodile bestiality and whatever the hell the Wavy Tube Man Chronicles were, it was worth it.

  • And finally, here's this pretty good Mario game. At some point, I'm gonna have to expand this so I can give props to Portal 2, LA Noire, Renegade Ops and whatnot. But none of those game had Bullet Bills with raccoon tails, so they don't make the cut. Life isn't fair, folks.

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