Games Played in 2011
Games I beat in 2011 or played enough of that I know I don't want to finish them. My focus this year has definitely been trying to diminish the backlog a bit.
List items
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While the Tales series often receives criticism for not acknowledging that JRPGs are supposed to have dark and/or angsty story elements, I found the bright, colourful, uncomplicatedness of Vesperia to be totally refreshing. Just after the 2010 holidays, I spent about 20 hours playing this game and was impressed by the art style, characters and deep, but easy to grasp skill system. Unfortunately, I've never much liked fighting-game style combat in RPGs and wound up getting tired of the combat system before finishing the game. I will likely pick this up again at some point.
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I spent most of the second half of 2010 playing P3P (I completed the story 3 times -- I was working on a FAQ for it at one point), but I have also played my share of it during 2011 as well. Persona 3 is, without much doubt currently, my favourite game. It has become my go-to when I'm having a bad day or am in need of a sure distraction. I will likely play this at least once per year for many years to come.
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While I have never been particularly interested in brain teaser puzzles, the stories in the Layton games have received so much praise that I decided to try this one out. Unfortunately, I found myself FAQing the puzzles to death in order to advance a story that I found wasn't worth making the effort over puzzles I didn't enjoy. This series is definitely not for me.
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This shit is bananas. Glad I played it, had an awesome time, also glad I never have to play it again.
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Classic. One of the most hilarious adventure games ever made.
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As a big fan of the Ace Attorney series, I found AAI to be a pretty tremendous disappointment. I've always liked Edgeworth and was excited about playing a game that was centred upon some of his adventures in prosecution, but the further I got in to AAI, the more it started to feel like a cash-in. I was happy for some of the fan-service and felt like side characters from the series were incorporated in interesting ways and I enjoyed meeting a lot of the new characters as well. Unfortunately, the writing in the cases themselves felt rushed and ill-considered: the sad attempts at multiple crowning moments of awesome in the final case are probably the best example. Also, despite there being almost ridiculous limitations on Edgeworth in some instances, I felt like this game utterly failed at creating the kind of tension I felt while playing the first two Ace Attorney games.
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Digital: A Love Story was one of the few games that actually drew my attention away from Persona 3 Portable in 2010. After recommending it to some friends and seeing that its creator had recently released a new game, I decided to give it a second playthrough. It was just as good, if not better, the second time around.
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I most definitely did not connect with this game as I did with Digital: A Love story. I felt like the subject matter in the story was fairly timely and interesting, but the ending that I got felt stunted and awkward without making me want to replay the game to see one of the other endings. I also found the anime-style art to be a little jarring since I generally don't associate it with high school kids in Ontario.
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I had a great time re-playing The Longest Journey for the first time in a very long time (probably too long). I decided to download this and give it another try after being so disappointed in Ace Attorney Investigations. I wanted to play a game that had a story that would grip me and hang on until I was finished, and it definitely served that purpose. I've been thinking about re-playing Dreamfall as well this year, but I'm not sure I want to tackle those horrible stealth and fighting mechanics just now.
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With regards to setting and tone, L.A. Noire is kind've my video game wet dream. L.A. Confidential is probably my favourite movie of all time and I've been a huge fan of James Ellroy's novels since I first started reading them when I was a teenager. I felt like L.A. Noire did a great job at bringing the spirit of both the actual time period in which it takes place and also the fictional genre it's borrowing tropes from. The cases were interesting and so was the overarching story about G.I.s and their issues after the Second World War. The game collapsed a bit, however, under the weight of its own repetitiveness. The 3 types of action sequences as well as the interrogations were far too repetitive and felt a little too gamey in such an otherwise immersive world. I would love to see a much-improved sequel to this game, but it's very unlikely. Amazing and disappointing all at the same time, but still one of the best games I played in 2011.
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Did not finish this, but did put in a good 12 hours or so. While I am a fan of other games in the MegaTen universe, I found the demon negotiation system in Strange Journey to be a lot too difficult and random for my tastes. I may pick this up again in the future, but we'll see.
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Since I didn't play games through most of my adolescence and early adulthood, this is actually the first Final Fantasy game I've finished. I've tried out the PS2 games and XIII, but I have generally not liked either the story or the gameplay enough to finish them. In all honesty, I didn't absolutely adore the story or gameplay in VII, but I did like them enough to finish it (and I guess all the pressure from my FFVII fangirl friends helped as well). The materia system is a cool skill system, but I find it requires a little too much micromanagement; the story is doled out nicely at good moments rather than being more middle and ending heavy like X and XIII. All in all, it was a good experience. I've since purchased Crisis Core and am looking forward to seeing more of the universe's story.
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I have long been a fan of visual novel-style adventure games for the DS and 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors does not disappoint its genre-mates. The room escape puzzles are challenging, but logical in a way that is not obtuse video game logic. The story is phenomenal -- keeps you guessing right until the end and while the twists are always surprising, they don't feel at all ridiculous (because really, they've given you the information you need to figure a lot of it out already, you just need to put it together the right way). I'd recommend this to anyone who likes adventure games. 999 is definitely my 2011's 2010 Game of the Year.
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My feelings for Catherine are terribly mixed. As a huge fan of Persona 3 and 4 I was thrilled to get a sneak peek at what Persona 5's HD art style might look like. I was also happy to see the development team's continued experimentation with personal relationships, romance, and everyday life in this game. While it wasn't really for me, I also thought the puzzle gameplay was interesting. I think the big problem I had with it is that it just didn't connect with me on a personal or emotional level the way Persona 3 and 4 did. Interesting, but the whole thing just didn't really work out for me as a package.
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Picked this game up when I bought my PS3 and finally got around to playing it a little bit at a time over the course of 2011. Still haven't delved much into player-made levels, but the campaign is super fun (though the controls are floaty) and incredibly charming. Wish I'd played it much, much earlier.
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Finally got around to cracking this open over the summer. Still haven't progressed through all the levels, but will likely put in a few hours here and there over the rest of the year. They sure didn't change much about the Katamari formula, but really, that's totally unnecessary. Loaded with charm and totally addictive gameplay, Katamari is still just as much fun as it was the first time around.
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Put about 10 hours in to this in the spring, got really sick with the flu and dropped it in favour of sleeping and sitting in front of the TV due to being so sick. I've tried several times to pick it up again and it's just not happening for me. I'm still not really satisfied with how much of it I've played, but it may take awhile before I'm interested again. May actually play Persona 2: Innocent Sin before I finish this, which I'm a little sad about, I kind've wanted to play them in order, but when I can't get in to something, it's tough to force it.
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A friend of mine loaned this to me. It's so well-loved I figured I'd give it a try, but I wound up dropping it after one short sitting (about 2 hours). I'd rather have a fixed camera than the control scheme in this game. It's not even a very old game, just a dumb control choice. Could not deal with it at all.
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Trace Memory has been, over the last number of years, one of those games that I see pop up from time to time on random recommendation lists (a la Amazon or GameFAQs) that I continually put off buying for no good reason. Recently I saw a cheap used copy on Amazon, so decided to pick it up. While not as impressive as Cing's later efforts, I don't think Trace Memory is quite as bad as some critics made it out to be when it was first released. Yes, some of the puzzles are pretty ridiculous and a lot of the DS functionality doesn't work all that well. The story, however, is not all that bad (despite a gaping chasm or two) and in the grand scheme of things, the DS's unique features are implemented in somewhat interesting ways -- something that can't really be said of most later DS releases. Not the greatest game I've ever played, but not too bad either -- more a tech demo than anything else, and I'm glad I made it a low priority and paid much, much less than full price for it.
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Over the past few months I've been developing a pretty strong interest in Otome games. I'm a huge fan of shoujo manga -- it's kind've my answer to bad romance novels -- and otome games seem like a lot of stupid fun. Unfortunately, these games are rarely released in English, which makes Yo-Jin-Bo pretty surprising. There are a lot of Otome series out there that have fairly significant Western followings due to their manga and anime adaptations (series like Corda, Harukanaru, Angelique and Hakuoki), and until I really started digging, I'd never heard of Yo-Jin-Bo before.
Glad I picked it up, it was an interesting experience. The story was okay, but I'm pretty sure I liked it more for the novelty and less for its actually being a decent story. The voice-acting is certainly good and I like many of the voice actors cast in the game, but the dialogue is rife with very, very bad pop-culture references that are completely out of place -- especially given the game's historical setting.
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Playing both this and Ace Attorney Investigations in the same year made me realize that I haven't liked anything this team at Capcom has done since Trials and Tribulations (the third Phoenix Wright game). The art style and animation are fantastic, but I'm not a fan of timed puzzles and found the gameplay got stale fast and never really went anywhere. Dropped about halfway through. Huge disappointment and I'm kind've sorry I wasted my money on this one, since I have so little right now.
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Unfortunately, I think Radiant Historia kind've got a raw deal from me this year. I started playing it at a time when I was suffering from pretty severe JRPG fatigue and was practically drooling for a game that would change things up for me a little bit. It's got fun combat (though I'd say it's a little on the easy side) and an interesting story, but unfortunately that story doesn't really get going until you're about 15 or so hours in to the game (I gave it 20). That's a lot of commitment to expect from the player, especially when the rest of the gameplay isn't particularly fresh or interesting. Radiant Historia, however, deserves a lot more of my attention that I was willing or able to give it. I will definitely be shelving this and going back to it in the future -- likely some time in 2012. The lure of Skyrim was just far too great.
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To the Moon, for me, is in 2011 what Digital: A Love Story was for me in 2010: the emotional high point of my year in video games. Remember the opening montage of Carl and Ellie's life together in Up!? To The Moon is the 4-hour video game equivalent to that montage. Essentially, a dying man has requested that his memories be altered in order to make him believe, on his death bed, that he was able to fulfil his life's greatest wish. The two main characters of the game, Dr. Watts and Dr. Rosalene work for a company called Sigmund Corp, which will perform this service on dying patients. The game is essentially their trip through the memories of a man named Johnny Wyles. The story is pretty fantastic, but the game does suffer from some technical problems here and there. The pixel hunting can be fairly imprecise and at one point I believed I was missing something when actually, I was just clicking just a pixel or two to the left of where I should have been (I actually wound up reloading a save and replaying about 30 minutes of the game because I thought there was a glitch, or I'd done something terribly wrong). Despite those technical issues, however, I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good story and a great soundtrack to go with it.
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Played this due to it being one of the few english-localized Otome games without realizing that it was a pretty hilarious GB meme at one point. This is definitely meant for younger audiences, but it is undeniably adorable and has a great deal of charm. Probably the pinkest game I've ever played.
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I loved everything about this game other than the combat. Stunning art style, beautiful music, interesting setting, tone and story. All that together with the amazing, dynamic narration made for a game where I could just see the love that went in to it. While the combat wasn't really for me, I still loved the rest of it enough to finish Bastion and I'm glad I was able to experience it. Definitely worth the 600 Microsoft points.
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I am horribly torn about Skyrim. After logging somewhere around 120 hours on two characters, I can say without much hesitation that Skyrim is my 2011 Game of the Year. It came at a great time for me -- just as I was getting a bit bored of turn-based combat and wanting something more action-oriented. Problem is, I took a pretty stupid risk and bought the PS3 version. I haven't been able to get too deep in to a single play-through because I don't have the patience to deal with the sluggish framerate, unacceptably long load times, or frequent freezes I've been experiencing once I get about 30 or so hours in. Hopefully Bethesda will do some magic over the next few months so I'll be able to really dive in to Skyrim as much as I'd like to next year, but the technical issues are definitely a huge disappointment. We'll see, maybe I'll ask for the 360 version for my birthday or something.
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I logged quite a good number of hours in to this game during 2011, but did not finish it. It's been my go-to throughout the year for when I've wanted to just chill out, listen to a podcast and play something a bit casual. I don't think that the story is as good as in the first Puzzle Quest, but I like a lot of the changes they made to the combat. Still a lot of fun. Will play a bunch of this in 2012 as well, I imagine.
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