EDIT: I completely forgot to post this back in January. I’ve been hibernating from the blizzard in Iowa and it’s starting to clear so I might post a “what’s up with Roundhill” post soon.
EDIT EDIT: Too lazy to put in pictures or links. I hope you enjoy reading text.
As I started to compile my list of games that I played this year I quickly realized that there was no way I could organize these all into a list and say that certain ones were better than others like I could with music and movies. I know it seems like a cop out, but I really just want to highlight some of my favorite games that I played this year and write about them.
Mass Effect 2
Until I played Mass Effect I wasn’t a Bioware fan like every other gamer. Knights of the Old Republic is certainly a fun game, but I didn’t connect with it like a lot of people did. Part of it, was the D&D combat system. I’m not a huge thinking game kind of guy, I love action in my games. Mass Effect for me was an excellent example of what an action RPG looks like.
Mass Effect has such a solid thought out sci-fi universe. The universe of Mass Effect is so well realized for a standalone game that you’d think it was based off of a book series or a television show. For example, you have multiple alien races within the game that are unique and complex. From the all female Asari to the stingy Turians, each alien race is cool and has history. There are even developed racial tensions. The story is politically and emotionally super charged and because of the games ‘choose your own adventure’ style narrative, there are thousands of options for you to shape your story and watch how the universe around you responds to your actions. With such excellent settings, characters, and plot, the third person gameplay in ME1 was a welcome feature for me. Critics may have found it a bit more stiff than say Gears of War or Uncharted, but that didn’t bother me.
Mass Effect 2 took a perfect sci-fi game and made it even better. Graphics, characters, and especially gameplay were all given masive improvements. I loved the sense of permanence that your actions had on the storyline. *SPOILERS* In my story, I play a male Paragon Commander Shepard and in the end suicide mission I sent Jacob to go through the tubes to unlock the doors and he ended up dying in the process. It gives me chills knowing that Jacob will NOT be in my playthrough of Mass Effect 3. *END SPOILER*. This emotional echo is what truly showed me how well a game can effect your emotions and how video games truly are art.
Minecraft
I picked up on this game during a “free weekend” when Notch’s (the games creator) servers were down. To me, Minecraft is successful because it panders to someones inner creative self in a way that hasn’t been seen since the original Sims. It’s simplicity/complexity is such a beautiful double sided coin that gamer and non gamer alike should give this game a shot… After some tutorials of course.
When I first fired up the game I spent time walking around taking in the blocky visuals and silly looking cows and pigs which I proceeded to punch mercilessly. It quickly became apparent that this was not the point of the game. The game was interesting but I was totally lost as to what I was supposed to do or even why this game was setting the internet aflame with praise. After goofing around in such a strange pixelated world for a while, I looked up some basic tutorials on how to make wooden planks and basic tools With every new little thing I found myself saying this game is brilliant and one of the most amazing indie titles out there.
Super Meat Boy
Never has being so infuriatingly angry, frustrated, and all around pissed off been so much fun. This is a tougher than diamond nails platforming game that mixes in platforming and difficulty from old Super Mario Bros. titles, VVVVVV, and I Wanna Be the Guy. The humor and sense of style appeals to the true gamer (not the caffeine fueled junk food connoisseur that G4 and Mountain Dew pander to) with retro chiptunes, references to older eras of gaming, and 8-bit warp zone levels.
Call of Duty: Black Ops and Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Arguably the biggest blockbuster first person shooters of the year. And to me at least, they succeeded their predecessors greatly in single player and multi player aspects. I’ll talk about Black Ops first and then Bad Company 2.
I had my issues with Modern Warfare 2 that I voiced in probably too lengthy of a rant. When I played through Black Ops though I was pleasantly surprised to see that Treyarch managed to make a better game as a whole than Infinity Wards 4th effort. The single player campaign had some of the best set pieces of the year with a cool summer movie plot line that was easy enough to follow and kept you interested which is a lot more than I can say for Modern Warfare 2′s attempt at being a complex Tom Clancy novel.
The multiplayer is really good too. It plays like every multiplayer Call of Duty since Modern Warfare 1, but that’s not a bad thing. The CoD points are a welcome addition, as well as the incredibly addicting wager matches. Sticks and Stones, a game type where everyone has crossbows, ballistic knives and a tomahawk, is my favorite for the record.
After all the smoke has cleared, I think the real success in modern shooters this year was Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Whereas this game was ho-hum in the single player, the multiplayer was a unique breath of fresh air that combined the best elements from the Battlefield series with a bit of Call of Duty leveling and experience points. Call of Duty multiplayer is fun because it’s pretty straightforward if you can keep up with its fast pace. But you usually play as a lone wolf and can get away with it, even in team game types. Bad Company 2 requires you to join up in a squad and play as a class that’s useful to your team if you want to be successful. I love all of the little things in the multiplayer that make it so great such as the spotting system. If you see an enemy, you can hit ‘Q’ (Or ‘back’ or ‘select’ for 360 and PS3 players) to “tag” that enemy for your team and he will show up with an arrow above his head and a blip on the radar for a while. This small feature is such a huge help to your team mates and can make or break your teams effectiveness. Good recon snipers can be so much more helpful than just picking off enemies from a distance. They can let you know where the enemy is before you can even see them. I’m really looking forward to what Dice does with Battlefield 3.
Just Cause 2
I remember seeing that Just Cause got bad reviews when it initially came out so like every gamer I ignored it since it got numerical reviews lower than 7. I heard a few good things about Just Cause 2 and saw some fun gameplay that had to do with the grapple hook but I still kind of dismissed it since it was associated with Just Cause. I was wrong to do so. Avalanche Studios, I apologize. I bought it during the Steam Give and Get sale on a whim and after getting used to the control scheme, I fell in love with it. It’s over the top like a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. It’s world, the Panau Islands, is huge. The grapple hook is so much fun in the way it makes you feel like a mechanical South American Spider-man. And the vehicles and gunplay are just a shy better than good. This is GTA IV to those who liked GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas the best when they could type in cheats, get a helicopter, a jetpack, or a plane and go terrorize a city. My average goofing off in Just Cause 2 consists of grapple climbing to the top of a sky scraper, sky diving off of it and parasailing onto a military vehicle where I open fire on some opposing military base. Pretty soon they send more enemies and maybe an attack chopper after me. I might drive my car at full speed, para sail out of it and grapple to that helicopter, punch and headbutt the pilot, toss him out and take over the helicopter so that I can open fire on the base with missiles and rockets.
Alien Swarm
Yeah, you forgot about this one didn’t you? To be honest I did too. Originally a UT2K4 mod, Valve picked up the mod team in Valve fashion and had them build the game in the Source engine. They did this with Portal and the upcoming DotA2, but they released this one for free. It’s a top down co-op shooter that honestly was a lot of fun. Fighting off hordes of aliens with futuristic weapons and turrets certainly has it’s appeal, and the fact that it was released for free should mean that this is still being played a ton. So what happened? I think Valve is missing a few opportunities with Alien Swarm.
1. Not releasing it for Mac. With Valve’s release of Steam on OS X, I’ve been trying to get more people to try it since it’s one of my favorite programs. Initially they released Portal for free so that people could have an incentive to play something on Steam but that deal is gone now and it’s hard to convince someone to download what looks to them like an online game store. If they ported Alien Swarm to OS X, they could have something to try out that has full Steam features and support and they could decide whether they like the program or not.
And that’s it. Valve is perfect.
