Games of 2011
All the new games I played this year, ranked by preference
List items
-
It's like they refined videos games into pure fun, cut it with awesome and injected it into my veins. They took Saints Row 2, streamlined and honed it (in a few cases a little too much) and then cranked all the best bits up to maximum. The missions are awesome and exciting and just keep getting better, and the gameplay is enjoyable throughout. Leaping into a car through the windscreen will never get old.
-
Fantastic writing and characters, genuinely funny and adds a whole load of interesting new mechanics rather than just recycling everything from the first game.
-
The Witcher and Witcher 2 present a fantasy world that is so much more real than the one found in most other games. There is no clear cut good and evil, just shades of gray and hard choices. It creates a feeling of interacting with real people in real situations, rather than just min maxing a character in a clockwork system. The Witcher 2 takes this brilliance from the first one and adds stunning graphics and art, and tough and interesting combat.
-
Utterly beautiful, great fun to play and with some of the best executed story telling in video games. Plus, the best soundtrack of the year.
-
I missed the previous Elder Scrolls game but loved Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. This hits all the same notes I loved about those but more. The writing may leave a lot to be desired and the game is buggy as balls but the sheer breadth of things to discover and experience and the range of things it allows you to do more than makes up for it. It constantly reaches wider and further, straining at the limitations of its own technology, for good and for bad.
-
Beautiful and sad and funny and wonderful. While the interaction is minimal, it serves to pull you into the situations rather than being a passive observer.
-
The combat was fantastic, the art direction was brilliant and the world was realized amazingly. If only the boss fights hadn't sucked balls and the smoke and mirrors hadn't broken down so often.
-
I know all the reasons why this game got so much criticism, and I agree with most of them, but it just didn't seem to matter. I just enjoyed this game so much. Shame it's story was done so much better by The Witcher 4 years earlier.
-
I've never really got into Dawn of War, but this mod/game mode thing turned out to be fantastic fun. Three player co-op with just enough carrot and stick to keep you coming back for hours. Also, the Mek-boy can teleport.
-
Not very much interaction, but enough to make you a part of the story and not just an observer. Really well executed story telling, interesting and varied characters and unnervingly real and challenging situations.
-
Magicka is fantastic, silly fun. The magic combining system is great, the spells are nearly all great and the game has a great sense of humour. Unfortunately plagued by indie-ass multi-player jank, but when it works it's great.
-
As an ex-Ork tabletop player, I don't like Space Marines very much, but slaughtering waves of Orks and Chaos with a Thunder Hammer is just so much fun. A few shooting heavy encounters in the second half drag things down, but the jet pack bits are fantastic, the combat is consistently entertaining and the story is passable. The multi-player is also really fun, if rather janky.
-
Some of this game is fantastic and some of is pretty bad. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did, but it has to be commended for doing stuff that video games just don't do.
-
Like LA Noire, it takes the essentials of an Adventure game and packages it in a more fun framework of gameplay. Plus it's pretty funny and there's a doll who's power is to fart, and you use that to solve a puzzle.
-
Yo, it's more Assassin's creed. Does very little to build upon Brotherhood and, from what I here, does not really advance the story, but Brotherhood was so good that doing it again is still fun.
-
What appeared to a neat little physicsy game turned into one of the most bizarre experiences of the year. The planetary gameplay is fun, if a little frustrating, but the story, if you can call it that, turned out to be surprisingly entertaining.
-
Rhythm gameplay and grindy RPG games go together really well when you think about it, and this is testament to that. Surprisingly good writing too. Shame there's so little music.
-
A clever little puzzle game, made interesting by it's side-by-side co-op hook.
-
MMOs distilled to their purest drug form and poured into a dual joystick shooter mold.
-
I found this to be a more frustrating, less creative Minecraft, but it was still pretty entertaining at times.
-
Chime on the PS3. The co-op mode is quite fun, but the new songs are meh and it's still just Chime.
-
Looks really cool, less fun to play.
-
I just didn't like this, don't know why.
-
Guns ruin everything.
-
Like Chess but with infinity more variables. Not fun for me.
0 Comments