Your Acting's Like The End Of The World

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.