Top Five Games of 2011...

I haven't ever really done a Top x Games list before because, well, I've just never really gotten around to completing that many games that were released in one year to make a list. I always find myself getting onto the latest craze games a few months later, just when the next big thing has come out. This year though, I was able to jump on board - thanks to my lovely wife - two of the best games of the year straight away.

I would like to mention as well that I haven't played Skyrim yet. 



1. Dead Space 2

I personally would have thought a game like Batman: Arkham City or Battlefield 3 would have been my number one game of the year, especially given the hours I've ploughed into the two games. However, whenever I think of the best single player story game of the year, I keep coming back to Dead Space 2. I liked the first Dead Space fair enough, it was a great corridor horror game which I could actually play (it's not to say I can't play Resident Evil, it's just the control system for that game is broken as fuck - I get building tension in games, but to make it so you can't run and gun, even without accuracy, is just pathetic). 

There are too many times when a horror game is released and people claim it's just brilliant because it's so terrifying, well, that's all well and good, but usually they just aren't. Dead Space 2 on the other hand takes the terror of Dead Space and amplifies it perfectly. There really is no better game this year story wise, sound wise, visually and gameplay wise. Nothing makes you shit yourself more than the sound of necromorphs screaming in far off corridors, lights blinking and you've only got a couple of rounds left in your guns. 

Games lately have started to feel a little ho-hum when it comes to storylines. Too often I'll be playing a game and realise that all I'm doing is going from point A-B and that's really all. The story happens in the background or during cutscenes. Dead Space 2 though takes the going from point A-B and makes you feel like you're the one progressing the story, not the game progressing the action just to get to another cut scene. 

I've not really experienced a game which has dealt with religion so perfectly as Dead Space 2. It deals with the distinction between a religion and a cult and the delusions of people who believe that their cult is a religion. Rarely have I come away from a game and thought that I felt educated or that I've actually experienced something. The last game to do that was Red Dead Redemption, but hardly even goes as deep as Dead Space 2 when dealing with the same themes. Guilt, depression, religion. 


Where Dead Space 2 is a better game than Dead Space is it takes away what happened in the first game and burdens Isaac Clarke with the such a level of pain and guilt that you can't help but feel for the poor guy. After losing his girlfriend and going through the events of the first game, Isaac shouldn't have had to go through this all over again, but he does, and we feel his pain every step of the way  - especially when he gets killed because of your mistakes over and over again. 


I haven't even mentioned the exemplary gameplay and fantastic new enemies - the velociraptor style necromorphs being a personal favourite, especially the trophy that comes with them - but I think that's what makes this such a great game. You can talk about the story and the themes it deals with at length without evening mentioning the intelligent level design and game play. 


2. Batman: Arkham City


Batman: Arkham Asylum was a good game. You felt like Batman, you kicked ass like Batman, and you got to glide like Batman. It made you feel good. It suffered a little from a boring boss fight at the end, but was memorable because it was Batman done right. Batman: Arkham City is great.


When they look back at games in the future (yep) and look at games that are turning points in quality and gameplay, Batman: Arkham City will be considered a classic. It'll be The Third Man of the game generation. Scratch that, it is The Third Man of the game generation. It's cool, it's smart, and most importantly, you feel like Batman. 


The storyline is great, bouncing you from one villain to another, always moving. This is a semi-open world game, you're still confined by the walls of Arkham City, but you never feel like you're restricted from anything. Fighting is fluid with combo's becoming an absolute breeze. 


The score though is something else, this is fantastic stuff. When you're gliding around the city the score hums along underneath and then just as you come on a group of thugs it knows to hit in with the violins and build the tension. It's an amazing achievement in sound design. 


This is a game which could easily be played in a 24 hour session and you'd feel exhausted, naturally, but damn would you feel great. Batman: Arkham City does exactly what more games should do, and that's make you feel like the character you're playing. Too often you'll play a game and feel like you're just a cypher moving the plot along, yeah you get to shoot a few enemies, but if you didn't your teammates will. Batman on the other hand makes you feel like you can climb onto your roof, jump off and glide down the street. 

3. Battlefield 3


This was my most anticipated game of the year. I honestly have never poured as much time into a game as I did Battlefield: Bad Company 2's multiplayer. A genius set up of team based antics where you fight against other teams to win. So, when Battlefield 3 was announced, naturally I got a little excited. 


Where most games - like Dead Space 2 above - have multiplayer tacked on so you feel like you're getting your moneys worth, Battlefield 3 has a single player journey which is tacked on. So far I'm only halfway through this and I can safely say it's pretty darn boring. Battlefield 3 wasn't made for a single player game, that area is just the training grounds for the multiplayer. And the multiplayer does not disappoint. 


The same game modes are back from BFBC2, but here they're tweaked a little to make it even more exciting. The maps have the right bottlenecks and have a true feel of a battlefield. Whilst on consoles you're limited to 24 players (on PC you have 62 player maps), you never feel like you're playing against just a couple of people. If you play against a proper team which is playing correctly, then strategies come into play and are necessary for a win. 


This is what makes Battlefield 3 so great. It can be a one person army game where you attempt to take over the opposition - and you will most likely fail doing this - or a team based game. And if you have a team that works properly then it's like heaven. Sound design is perfect and visually this is one of the greatest looking multiplayer games available on PS3. To have such high graphic capabilities with 24 people moving around, shooting, driving tanks, flying jets, it's insane. 


If the single player were as good as the multiplayer then it'd be game of the year material, but sadly it just can't take that place. 



4. Limbo


Limbo came out on the XBox 360 last year and was met with great fanfare. It was a game that had cemented the games as art argument. Being a fairly solid disliker of the 360, I felt that I was never going to be able to play this game. Then fortunately the exclusivity of the game ended, and it became available to the Playstation users of the world. 


Limbo is quite simply a one of a kind experience. It's black and white, there's minimal expressions of your little boy that you move around this dark and scary world. It's a daunting experience and one that you move through with great trepidation, because you never know what will kill you next. 


It's definitely a game which needs to be played by anybody. Gamers, non-gamers, anybody. It's truly brilliant in its design and in the simplicity of the game you're forced to question why your little man is continually being killed. Why is he in Limbo? You never find out why he is in Limbo, but you do feel his pain whenever he's crunched, squashed, munched, or drowns. It's disturbing stuff, but it makes the experience all the more worthwhile. 


I honestly don't think I'll ever play another game like Limbo and I love that. 

5. Enslaved


Yeah, Enslaved came out last year, but oh well, it's on this list because it deserves to be. It's a game that should have done better than it did. The gameplay is perfect and the graphics are absolutely beautiful - it's set in a post apocalyptic world, but you wouldn't hardly know that given how green it is. It has great motion capture from the king of motion capture, Andy Serkis. Enslaved also works the Monkey: Journey to the West story perfectly. A must play.



Honourable mentions: Crysis 2 and Mortal Kombat.

Top 10 Albums of 2011 - Really 11 Albums.

Top 10 Albums of 2011.

It's been well over a year since I've posted on this seemingly long forgotten blog. I intended to keep up with my blogging duties, but given that nobody actually reads this thing except for my wife when I pressure her into reading it, I felt no great need to write long diretribes about crap. Except when it comes to the most acceptable time of the year to write a list. 

So, without any further ado (or adieu, or whatever), here's my top 10 albums of 2011.

1. El Camino - The Black Keys
Best track: Lonely Boy

It's no surprise that The Black Keys latest has insanely quickly become my favourite album of the year. In a year when there were two Gomez related albums, The Black Keys followed up with the absolutely sublime Brothers - which was my favourite album of last year, a year which I honestly cannot remember another album except the Inception soundtrack - with the brilliant El Camino. El Camino is clap rock at its finest. I'm not even sure if clap rock is a real term, but none the less, I'm using it now. 

From almost the best song of the year, to the awesome Gold on the Ceiling, to the brilliant Mind Eraser (which I was hoping to be a Queens of the Stone Age cover, but no dice), it's hit after hit. I'm sure that The Black Keys have sold their souls to the devil, because no Black Keys albums have been as good (except for Rubber Factory) until these two. Every release has been a must buy, and every release has been adequate - good rock, but just not elevated to the greatness that it should have been. 


El Camino will help burst The Black Keys into a stratosphere or something that they should be in. It's quite simply an amazing release. 


2. Shapes & Shadows - Ben Ottewell
Best Track: All Brand New

I adore this album. It's nine tracks of bliss. Ben Ottewell has always been the best of the trio of voices in Gomez. It took me a few days to warm to Shapes & Shadows - as has been the case for all Gomez releases lately, but I don't love them any less. It's a sweet album which reveals itself over many listens - a problem which quick one listen reviewers wouldn't have given the time to as the album wasn't received as well as it should have been. 


3. Moonfire - Boy & Bear 
Best Track: Milk & Sticks 


Boy & Bear reached a popularity that would have been the death of them if their debut album was to be no good. Anyone who has heard their cover of Fall at Your Feet will atest that this is an amazingly talented band and only a major misstep would have caused their album to be a failure. Moonfire is full of instant classics. Milk & Sticks is just about the best Australian song I've heard since 2020 by The Herd, Oh My by The Drones or Feeding the Birds and Hoping For Something in Return by Something For Kate. It's infectiousness is crazy. 

My wife will kill me for making this comparison, but it is the equivalent to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. The layers of Milk & Sticks and its lyrical complexity is beautiful. But, one song alone does not a good album make, and with Feeding Line, Part Time Believer (a song that could easily have come off as trite, but Boy & Bear work that fade out superbly) and My Only One compliment each other perfectly. This is a debut album which will be looked back on in years to come as one of the finest Australian releases ever. And at a time when our Australian bands are disbanding after one album - The Middle East you fools - it's great to see these guys doing so damn well. 


4. Whatever's On Your Mind - Gomez 
Best Track: Whatever's On Your Mind

A New Tide is my personal favourite Gomez album. I love Liquid Skin and see that as the best album of all time, but A New Tide is something else. It's almost on the same level. It's an album which was hard to love at first - I called it the worst album Gomez had done when it was released - but it revealed itself over many listens (a common trait with Gomez lately). Whatever's On Your Mind on the other hand managed to be accessible and catchy straight away. That is its blessing and its curse.

WOYM is Gomez's most commercial album by far, but they've reached a point where that shouldn't matter. People are either fans or they're not, and converting people is a difficult thing. Whatever's On Your Mind (the song) is the albums highlight track, but it's what you bring to Gomez that makes them even better. What you read in a Gomez song may not be what the song is about, so whilst other fans love songs like Our Goodbye, I tend to find myself sticking with the bombastic Options, X-Rays and Equalize. It's still a good release, but in the ouevre of Gomez, it's pretty minor stuff.


5. Future Shade - The Herd
Best Track: Red Queen Theory/Spin Cycle


Oh boy, The Herd are fucking angry. I always wondered what the latest Herd album would be like after the debacle that the Labor party has become. The Herd do what they do best here, and that is be that outspoken political hip hop which Australia needs. I'm a huge supporter of Summerland - I consider it one of the best Australian albums ever made, and it has one of my top five songs on it, 2020 - so to say my anticipation for this album was high, well, it's an understatement. 

Future Shade sees The Herd going in new directions, a little like Phrase's Babylon which mixes rock and hip hop superbly - I guess Bliss N Eso started this and they did it greatly with last years Running On Air. Future Shade's brilliance is with how angry its artists are - Ozi Batla spits his words out perfectly and makes his anger felt. For me though, the brilliance of this release is the move for Jane Tyrrell up to allow her to sing her own songs. Her presence has always made The Herd have a timeless quality to them, and here she's let loose and superbly so. Grandma's Song and Salary Cap are great examples of why this versatile group are essential to Australian hip-hop. Hilltop Hoods do what they do, and they do it well, but The Herd are something else entirely.

These top five albums have not really left my CD player at all this year, so whilst for the next six albums I've enjoyed them immensley, they've not gotten as much love as these top five. I'll write as much as I can about them though.

6. Design Desire - Abbe May
Best Track: Universes


Abbe May's first album was a breath of fresh air. Fresh, bourbounised air. It is one of the best albums to come out of Western Australia and Abbe May is one of the finest live acts we've got. Her follow up is not as great as Howl & Moan, and transcending the 70's is not really my thing, but Design Desire almost has it all. The first few tracks are great when played in a row, but seperately they're just a little less than brilliant. Design Desire, Mammalian Locomotion and Universes are catchy with simple lyrics and groovy guitar riffs. It's not what I would have ideally wanted from a follow up to Howl & Moan - I would have loved a proper Abby May & the Rockin' Pneumonia release instead of just an EP - but this is better than nothing. Much better than nothing.

7. Babylon - Phrase
Best Track: Faithful


Australian hip hop was insanely great this year. 360's latest album is just brilliant as well. But for me Phrase and The Herd did it best. This is one of the most accessible hip hop albums around, and the question could be asked if it really is true hip hop, but oh well. I just wish that Phrase and 360 would have gotten more publicity than the hack that is Drapht.

8. Drive Soundtrack - OST
Best Track: A Real Hero - College feat. Electric Youth


Drive is one of the years best films, but its soundtrack is something else. It's a thing of beauty. Like the film, it captures an era long gone and honours it perfectly. Whilst the somewhat lyrically cheesy A Real Hero is exactly that, cheesy, it's also one of the best theme songs for a film. I realise the song came out a couple of years ago, but in the context of the film it was almost as if it were written specifically for Drive. No doubt on these hot summer nights I will drive around with this blaring with the windows down. 


9. Seeker Lover Keeper - Seeker Lover Keeper
Best Track: Even Though I'm A Woman


Seeker Lover Keeper should be trite. It should be the new Young Divas. On paper it sounds like it'd be a feminist dream where cycles are in sync and everyone dances in circles with flowers in their hair. And whilst the album at times comes across as that, it transcends these preconceived notions amazingly. It's a sweet album which soothes as you delve into it. Even Though I'm A Woman is one of the finest tracks that Sarah Blasko has ever been involved with. A must hear. 


10. A Creature I Don't Know - Laura Marling
Best Track: The Muse


I love Laura Marling greatly. All of her albums have been a piece of jaw dropping brilliance. Lyrically the woman is amazing. Her voice is soothing and beyond her years. She sings about things that Australian female singers wish they could sing about with such truth and compassion. This is probably her finest release and one that I'm still finding lyrics which surprise me. Nobody should be this talented. 


11. The King is Dead - The Decemberists
Best Track: Down By The Water

The Decemberists failed dismally with their last release. A sidestep into concept album territory which was just plain boring and awful. Thankfully they followed it up with this great concoction of a country album. I doubt that The Decemberists will ever be able to reach the heights they did with Picaresque and The Crane Wife - two of the best albums to listen to on vinyl - but they keep plugging along and that makes me happy. The King is Dead took a while for me to get into, but it's territory I can see that Colin Meloy is comfortable with and that's ok. 


Let England Shake - PJ Harvey
Best Track: The Words That Maketh Murder


I'd be remiss without mentioning an album which surprised me. I've never really liked PJ Harvey, but this album surprised me with how great it is. I'm onboard with how many people love it. It gives me a want to get back into her earlier stuff. Slot in at a later stage Feist's latest album as well as I haven't had a chance to listen to that yet and I'm sure it's just as good as her other stuff. 


Next week... top 20 movies of 2011.