Best Games of 2011

Being employed for all of 2011 might not have been great for my free time, but it did allow me the freedom to try out pretty much any new game I was interested in, which worked out pretty well. I don't think I've ever managed to play this much new stuff around when it came out before. I haven't finished playing a couple of these games yet, which would normally mean they wouldn't make the list, but I feel I've played both of them enough to say about where they stand compared to the other stuff.

Best of 2011

10. L.A. Noire (Multi)


I don't look back on this as fondly as other games on the list, but a lot of that is probably reaction to all the horrible stuff we heard about the game's development and a bit of revisionist history. At its core, Noire is a very fun game that managed to mix adventure game-style mysteries with open world action effectively. The post-war Los Angeles setting was realized beautifully, the facial animation is pretty staggering, and the tale it weaves has all the elements of classic film noir. There are plenty of small issues, but the experience matches the ambition well.

9. Battlefield 3 (PC)


It's really too bad that beyond the graphics, sound design, and a few standout moments, the campaign of Battlefield 3 is otherwise so bland and fails to take advantage of what makes the franchise unique, because they could have helped make the game one of the best shooters in a long time. Instead, it's merely memorable as something that failed in its ambition to beat Call of Duty at its own game. The multiplayer saves it, though, combining all the best elements that they've found over the years into something addictive, rewarding, and very fun to play, whether you can maintain a decent kill ratio or not. And man, it really does look and sound fantastic.

8. Batman: Arkham City (Multi)


For an open-world game, Arkham City isn't that big, with a map that only takes a few minutes to get across even if you have to glide all the way around its weird shape, and not much to do beyond the main story besides collecting a whole ton of Riddler trophies. But the core gameplay they brought back from the last game is still so good, that actually playing it beats most open-world games on the market. The combat and stealth get a better chance to shine when there's more groups of goons to stumble across, and the more focused stuff once you get indoors is still a lot of fun. It would be hard to capture the thrill of being a super hero better than this.

7. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (PC)


The first game in the series had a lot of cool ideas, but it was ultimately a bit hamstrung by its nature as a sort of strange European RPG by a first-time developer. They used that experience very well though in crafting the sequel, a much better game that smooths over some of the rough edges well enough to let the good stuff underneath really shine. The game looks fantastic, with graphics that compliment the visual design and impress without being flashy, and the gameplay is a solid mix of discovering and learning about the game's world with a combat system that is tough but fun and rewarding. A really nice success story.

6. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PC)


Another surprisingly good sequel, Human Revolution learns from the mistakes of the last game that tried to follow up on the original classic and stays true to what was actually interesting about it while updating things that needed updating for the modern day. The game is not without significant flaws, notably in the design of the boss fights, but the core experience is so solid that it's hard not to get sucked into it. The game is really meaty, with plenty of interesting content and very little in the way of filler, giving you twenty solid hours of science fiction roleplaying and action and allowing for a variety of approaches to almost every situation. It's hard to really connect with the story, but the act of playing it is always compelling.

5. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)


I feel like the Zelda series has gotten a raw deal from many gamers in the last few years, perhaps starting with some backlash there was towards Twilight Princess when it came out earlier in the Wii's existence. Some complaints about the way they've decreased freedom and increased the tedium are valid, but I think sometimes these people are looking for something that they're just not going to get from the series anymore, which has always been meant to be friendly to kids. Taking into account changing standards and some of those now-systemic flaws though, I think Skyward Sword is perhaps the best game in the series since Majora's Mask. After a slow opening, the game opens up, and there's a lot of fun to be found in its world. Trying to tell an origin story again makes for a pretty interesting narrative, the use of motion controls is better justified, and the dungeons are as fun as ever. It's not the game-changing Zelda people probably wanted, but what it is is a very fun and comfortable adventure.

4. Bastion (PC)


A lot of times I get really into smaller games like this despite the gameplay, because their stories and presentations are unique and enchanting. That's true here, but the actual game part is really good as well. Bastion is a short but satisfying action RPG that hooks you both with its myriad of fun weapons and powers and all the ways it has to enhance the whole experience, from the unique setting and art style to the wonderful soundtrack and the unforgettable narration. And it might just have the most affecting story of any game on this list.

3. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3)


I find it odd that Uncharted seems to be held to a totally different narrative standard than other action games. Most of the time it's fine for a shooter or platformer to jump all over the world for very little reason, but since the characterization and voice acting in Uncharted is so good, people expect consistency in the plot too, and complain if a part of the game is only there because it's cool and certain threads get lost in the shuffle by the end. I understand hoping for a little more, it just seems unfair to me. Anyway, Uncharted 3 isn't the revelation that Uncharted 2 was because of course it isn't, but it still manages a fun mix of shooting, jumping, and puzzle solving, it's still funny and exciting, and its big moments are still staggering in their technical complexity and ability to impress. If it's Naughty Dog's last Uncharted game, it's a great note to go out on.

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC)


I played Oblivion for well over one hundred hours and called it my favorite game of 2006, so you know when I say that Skyrim is better in almost every way, I must really think something of it. It again captures the joy of exploring and getting to know an immensely large world, but improves on pretty much everything about that experience. Skyrim is a land with an intriguing history and sense of culture, and it's absolutely filled to the brim with cool stuff to do. There are six major questlines all with their own little twists and wrinkles, and their stories are generally much more interesting than what you'd find in the earlier games. There's more side stuff to do, and the basic experience of finding a dungeon and then raiding it for all of its treasures is more fun and less repetitive. If there's one thing the game doesn't do as well, it's come up with individual quests that feel as special at certain memorable moments. But the overall feeling of playing the game for many, many hours is undeniably superior.

1. Portal 2 (Multi)


I said Portal 2 was my favorite game of this generation of hardware, and I stand by it. It's just the right length, with its story mode being a significant chunk of content lasting just the right length, and the co-op being a meaningful addition. The puzzles are just as mind-bending as before, relying less on reflexes and more on your ability to think through a problem, and having plenty of new tricks and elements to keep things fresh the whole time. The story is funny and intelligent, expertly told in ways both direct and indirect, with well-written dialogue being superbly delivered by the small voice cast and the environment being carefully crafted to tell you everything about Aperture you'd ever want to know without saying a word. It's just the best example of both good game design and good execution of that design on this list, and it's my favorite game of the year.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim came out exactly one month ago, so now seems like as good a time as any to write about it. I haven't been playing it constantly that entire time, but I have spent quite a few hours with it. I haven't finished it, of course. Not in the sense of seeing all the things there are to see, or even just completing the main story quest. I'm maybe about a third of the way through it. As far as the other quest lines, I've joined three of the five major factions, and I've only finished doing work for one of them. I've done some other side jobs, but I still have a dozen unrelated side quests sitting open in my journal, and a couple dozen other miscellaneous objectives on top of that. I've only visited seven of the nine cities, and I'm sure the other two will give me plenty of more stuff to do one I check them out. And of course I won't really ever run out of stuff to do, since the game can keep generating easy little tasks even after you get through the more detailed ones. Most games that had this much content would be maddening, but there's just something about The Elder Scrolls that makes me relish visiting its gigantic, endlessly explorable world rather than getting tired of doing the same thing over and over again.

I was about as big a fan of Oblivion as anyone, but I can't deny that that game had certain problems. Its main plot had problems; it got pretty repetitive after a point, it wasn't always the easiest thing to know why you were doing what you were doing, and there's a certain sense of letdown when you realize you aren't the chosen one, but just a guy helping the chosen one out. It also had serious gameplay balance problems - it used the same skill system as Morrowind, where you had certain skills designated as major ones, and using them caused them to improve, which is how you would level up. But it was easy to accidentally build a character that could level up frequently without actually improving your combat ability much, and since enemies always leveled up to match you, serious difficulty problems would pop up. You should feel stronger by leveling up in an RPG, but it was often the bad guys who were beefing up more than you. Skyrim fixes this mostly by removing the distinction between class skills and other skills, so working on anything will give you progress toward leveling up, and dungeons are scaled based on a range rather than an absolute value, making some places certainly tough enough to match you, but others easy enough that you can get through them with no problem. If you spend all day improving your non-combat skills without raising your combat to match, you could still run into issues, but the balance seems better.

That's not the only improvement either; almost everything about Skyrim seems like it can be described as "like Oblivion, but better". As I said I haven't finished the main quest yet, but so far it feels suitably epic enough to be the primary focus of a game this big, and I've already done some things that were more interesting than anything that really happened in Oblivion's quest. The other factions also seem to have really interesting central plots this time, and are better integrated with the setting of Skyrim itself. Rather than their being a generically named guild chapter in every city, they all have headquarters in one location, and histories and reputations within those places that make them feel like part of the world rather than a trigger to generate quests. The Daedric side quests are back and as subversive as ever, and have a lot more variety in how you come across them. In general, it's impressive how much effort the game put into making sure you always have plenty of choice in what to do next. It's hard to go pretty much anywhere without picking up a bounty on some bandit or a lead on where to find something interesting.

I also really like the place of Skyrim itself. Oblivion drew complaints for being a pretty generic fantasy setting, and I always defended it as being a nice looking and pretty interesting place. Besides, as the central political and economic hub of the whole continent, it was all-encompassing and non-specific by design. But I can't deny that Skyrim is a more intriguing place. It has a real sense of local identity that Cyrodiil mostly lacked, and thanks to the technological innovations of the last nine years, they are able to present that identity more effectively than Morrowind did. The Nordic culture is heavily influenced by, well, Nordic cultures from real life, and is a cool blend of Scandinavian and fantasy influences. And the game also represents a big shift in the culture of the continent itself, taking place some two hundred years after Oblivion, and shaking up the entire political landscape. The world just feels alive when you hear people talking about the great war between men and elves and how the citizens are no longer happy with the empire's control over them, and just adding the concept of real open conflict to the setting makes it feel more important and dangerous, even if only affects the world in a significant way when you decide it does. And oh yeah, dragons are a pretty cool enemy.

I haven't even touched on all of the things they've added for you to do if you're interested in making your own equipment. Alchemy is back, and lets you mix potions without actually knowing their properties before hand, which feels more natural. Enchanting makes more sense, as you learn effects by taking them from already existing items, and it's a more intuitive system than there was before. And crafting is really significant. There's a purpose to hunting, as you can use the hides you take from animals and tan them to make leather. You can mine ore and smelt it into workable material, and then combine the leather and the metal to make weapons, armor, and jewelry. Which you can then enchant, of course. You can also chop wood for money and cook food to give it different effects, both minor activities but ones that enhance the idea that this is a world people live in and not just a playground for you to kill monsters in. Jeez, I just realized I haven't actually talked about combat. Or the perk system, which is the main focus of leveling up. God, this game is huge.

Anyway, the game engine is definitely improved on what they had before, but it's still basically the same engine, which means it's not the most elegant experience at all times. The combat system has the same general clunkiness as before, though I won't say it isn't greatly improved. The main addition is the dual wielding system, which lets you use any combination of one-handed weapons, spells, and shields in your two different hands, allowing for a greater variety of play styles. There's still bows and two handed weapons as well, and they're also effective ways to take on monsters and bandits. My personal approach is to sneak as much as possible, and pick off enemies with my bow before they know I'm there. When I do get into a scrape, I usually pull out one of the swords or maces that I've enchanted myself, and try to keep enemies off balance while I keep myself alive with a healing spell in the other hand. But I could have a spell in both hands, or a sword in one and an axe in the other, or anything else really if I wanted to. Every time you level up you pick a stat to improve (health, stamina or magicka; they've totally gotten rid of the other stats that those three used to be derived from), and a perk, which is either a bonus to or an extra ability related to one of your skills. It could be a reduction on the magicka cost of casting spells from a certain school, or it could be the ability to zoom in when aiming with your bow. It's a system that encourages you to level up and experiment with different skills, and helps reduce the occasional monotony of taking on the hundredth dungeon full of undead or spiders or necromancers or whatever.

As I mentioned it's the same engine, which means the same occasional technical hiccup, which might cause an NPC to act strangely or an object to not appear properly or any number of small issues that can pop up. I don't fault Bethesda for having some glitches in a game this big, and I also have to note that in the time I've played I've experienced the fewest number of issues that actually break the game from any Elder Scrolls game I've tried. There's been one or two crashes, and a single objective that won't resolve itself properly, but that's about it. And there really have been improvements to the engine - more subtle animations can still be awkward, but people do interact better, and the game just looks really, really nice. It's both the graphics and just the visual design of the world. When you're on top of a mountain looking out over a grand vista, or walking through a valley and seeing the Northern Lights play off a sky full of stars and Tamriel's two moons, it can be as breathtaking as any image you've seen in a game. And then a wooly mammoth might accidentally spawn in midair and plummet to its death. And that's Skyrim.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

I've been slowly working my way through this game's main quest for just shy of three years now (you can check out my pretty much abandoned attempt at chronicling that here), and only really got in gear to finish it recently when it dawned on me that we're only four months away from the next Elder Scrolls game coming out. I didn't want it hanging over me when I dove back into that world. The funny thing is, despite "beating" the game, I've barely scratched the surface of what's available, especially if you include its two expansions. I finished the main quest, I made some advances in a couple guilds, I did a bit of side questing, but there are entire factions I never interacted with and whole regions I didn't really explore. This series is known for its hugeness, and Morrowind certainly doesn't disappoint in that regard. I'd like to at least finish the main quests for the expansions at some point, but even if I don't, I sank a lot of hours into the game without coming close to running out of stuff to do.

Comparing Morrowind with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the sequel that came out four years later, it's easy to see what was improved and what took a step back in the name of user friendliness. Most of the gameplay in Morrowind feels pretty archaic at this point - you still have the ability to wield a variety of weapons and magic powers, but it's more awkward to select what you want to use, and the combat itself is amazingly archaic. There are a few different attack types, but all they seem to do is provide different advantages based on the type of weapon, and fighting someone (or something essentially boils down to repeatedly clicking on and hoping the numbers say you got a hit. There can be a lot of planning and strategy in one of the more difficult encounters - rarely have I put as much thought into what potions or scrolls I'll use before I rush into battle in other games. It still feels kind of crummy though, especially when 2002 really wasn't that long ago (though it was closer when I started playing).

This gameplay simplicity is felt in the quest design as well. There's a richness to Morrowind's world, with many different groups representing very different ideas, all having opinions about each other. Most NPCs have a ton of dialogue, unvoiced and occasionally shared but well written, and you can find out a lot just by asking. As far as the quests I actually did though, all of that flavor didn't have much impact on what I was actually asked to do. You spend your time tracking down monsters, recovering items, and talking to people, and not much of gets more interesting than that. I didn't find much as instantly compelling as the more memorable quests from Oblivion, where you're solving a mystery or being transported to another plane of existence. I won't complain about the fact that the quests hold your hand a lot less than in the sequel, because pretty much everything you need to know is there to find if you're inquisitive enough. There's no markers telling you where to go on the map, the journal is more of a log on what you know than instructions on what to do next, and you can only jump from one part of the map to another by paying someone to transport you. It can lead to frustration if you just want to get things done without puzzling out yourself what comes next. But it's not really a game for people who have no curiosity, the whole point of the game is sort of to uncover things at your own pace.

The presentation of the game is acceptable, though it's hard to say how it fared at the time. Other games definitely run smoother with better quality visuals, but Morrowind gets a lot of credit for its scale. As I mentioned the voice acting is limited to brief snippets when you approach a character, but it works well enough to sell the setting, and the music is nice without being too explosive, plus it's useful when it changes up to let you know when an enemy is near. The sound effects are pretty basic, but they're also functionally useful. Unfortunately the game is pretty messy technically. Even though it came out years ago, it still has stability problems, crashing more often than you'd like for a game that could stand to autosave a bit more often. There's some awkwardness in the game engine too, with lots of NPCs and monsters having difficulty finding their way over to you. Cliff Racers are already incredibly annoying, when you combine that with the game's troubles getting them to fly to you correctly, you have one of the worst game enemies of all time.

In any case, I wanted to get a taste of Morrowind, the predecessor of one of my favorite games ever made, and in the end I definitely got that. I didn't find it to generally be nearly as fun to actually play for hours on end, but there is something unique about the game that I think I appreciated. The main quest is certainly more interesting from a conceptual perspective than Oblivion's, for a start. Just wandering around a city at night, looking up at the vivid sky of Tamriel, searching for the next person who will help you keep moving forward, you realize the great job they did creating a sense of place that most games even now sometimes struggle with. I would love to see the detail of Morrowind enhanced by enjoyable gameplay like Oblivion's. Hopefully The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim can come close to doing that this November.

Game Update 11: DLC Round-Up

It's becoming an increasing trend in gaming, especially since the launch of the Xbox 360, to extend the life of games via downloadable content, which is cheaper than traditional expansions but also less substantial. Sometimes the DLC is really lame profiteering crap like paying for cheat codes or content that's already on the disc and just needs to be unlocked, but some developers do really interesting stuff with it. Here's a few of the updates and content packs I've played that are interesting enough to discuss but don't warrant full reviews.


The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine


A pretty satisfying and enjoyable new faction quest line for the game. It requires you to erase any infamy you have to get it going, which is annoying if you actually roleplay your character as a jerk, but once you get into the main quest there's a really nice story and progression going on. Some creative moments, decent fights with lots of allies, and the rewards are great - a full set of really good gear and an infinite supply of knights to fight by your side.

Mercenaries 2: Blow It Up Again


It's nice that this was available for free at first, because it's not really worth it otherwise. It comes with four new missions in new areas and two new skins based on Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, complete with goofy voice overs from crappy sound-alikes ( It was developed during the election frenzy). The problem is the skins don't lend themselves to the missions and the missions don't lend themselves to what makes Mercenaries 2 fun, since instead of having a chance to explore and mess around the new environments you're just plopped in a vehicle and told to do something, with not much chance to laugh at the fact that you look like a candidate for major national office. A few of the missions are pretty fun, but it just seems like a rushed job, and you can't even bring the presidential skins into the normal game.

Noby Noby Boy 1.1


Not so much DLC as a pretty substantial addition of content through patching. The new music and sound selection system is nice, multiplayer is wacky as hell, and the players have also managed to reach Mars thanks to some big multipliers randomly given as various lengths were reported. I don't know how far in the solar system or even galaxy this game intends to eventually go, but new areas to run around in with new creatures and objects to eat and crap out is always fun.

Prince of Persia: Epilogue


I mostly enjoyed it while I was playing, but in the end it wasn't worth the time and money. It's a couple more hours of the game, with the difficulty on the platforming stepped up thanks to longer sequences in between solid platforms you can be brought back to after falling. They also took out any semblance of the free-roaming aspect, making it a straight shot from beginning to end. The new boss and power are pretty much rehashes, and any story development ends up to be not worth it, as it ends on pretty much the same note as the main game with little of consequence really happening. Not necessary for anyone looking for some closure and not just more of the game. Not not not not.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I named Oblivion my favorite game of 2006 over a year ago, but I never got around to writing a full review, as that's something I didn't start doing until after I had been into it for a while and I wasn't sure at what point I should do so. Now's as good a time as any, as I've probably come as close as I ever will to seeing all there is to see, and I'm about to start playing the prequel, which I'm going to make a new blog for.

Oblivion really isn't like other games for me. I usually play focused single-player games until I complete the story, and then I move on. I might unlock some bonus stuff or eventually replay the game if I like it a lot, but I don't have enough time to give everything the attention it deserves. This is definitely not how I play Oblivion. All told, I've spent nearly two hundred hours exploring Cyrodiil, the Shivering Isles, and Mehrunes Dagon's Deadlands. Even after I get sick of it, it's only a matter of time before I come back, although the chances of that happening again diminish as I complete more quests, reducing the ones I haven't tackled to a very small number. I've split time between four different characters, and really immersed myself in the world.

The closer game designers get to creating a believable place, the easier it is for little things to break the suspension of disbelief, and that happens quite a bit, with the new AI system failing to prevent many awkward situations, although it's still cool how people can move from place to place, attack you if you've wronged them, and even get killed. The fact that all of their dialogue is voiced is also impressive, since there's so much of it, although it gets annoying when you hear the same voice over and over or the actor changes for a character based on the line they're saying. The music and sound effects are also quite good, with a score that's more atmospheric than memorable and appropriate magic and battle sounds. The graphics are pretty good, although it's hard to find a face using the character creation system that isn't pretty ugly and I wish the outdoor areas ran a little better on my system. The game crashes far too often, although the nice Autosave prevents it from being too much of a hassle.

Gameplay wise, the strength of the series has always been the variety. You can focus on pure combat, stealth, magic, or a combination. The ability to customize your own class instead of picking one from a list and improve any skill just by using it gives you a ton of flexibility in creating a fun, unique, and powerful character. The melee fighting isn't great if you're looking for a normal action experience, but it's pretty robust and strategic. Sneaking around, avoiding enemies and picking locks is way more fun than I expected it to be, and my favorite character ended up basically being a ninja master almost able to walk right by someone's face without them noticing, as long as there wasn't a light source in my face. I didn't explore the different schools of magic as much as I could have, but the different spells were also fun to play with, and I ended up collecting a lot of ingredients and making potions, useful when adventuring or just to sell for profit. A couple complains I can see are the simplification of the skill system, which didn't really bother me, and the level system, which does have some flaws. You improve your abilities through repeated use, but to improve your fundamental characteristics, you have to rest and level up. This would be fine, but every enemy in the game, except for a couple quest-specific ones, levels up with you, so you're never too over or under-powered. I'm mixed on this. On the one hand, the ability to go anywhere and do anything, knowing that you will be fairly challenged, is nice. On the other, it takes away the fun of becoming a very powerful character and being able to stomp certain enemies when you think you should be able. It doesn't make sense that goblins living in the sewers under the capital city become badasses just because I'm around. Taking away that progression is disappointing, although it ultimately doesn't hurt the game that much.

What's great about the game is that you can just wander around, and something interesting will always pop up, whether it's a clever side quest or just an enemy encounter you didn't expect. And when you're bored of that, there's the main quest and different factions to play through if you want some structure. The storylines that weave their way through the various paths you can take range from mildly interesting to brilliant, and they're all worth playing through. Not every line of dialogue is a winner, but it's an entertaining game with a really deep background, full of lore and history. I haven't been engrossed more by another RPG.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles

Last year I called Oblivion my favorite game of 2006, and that opinion sticks. Good points can be made about the generic fantasy setting, reduced depth compared to Morrowind, and some promises less than completely fulfilled, like the new AI which had some silly problems. But I still enjoyed the hell out of it for a long time, and continued to do so long after I wrote that. Pretty recently I added a whole bunch of content, including most of the add-ons, the enjoyable Knights of the Nine quest line, scads of user-created stuff, and the expansion released last year, Shivering Isles. It all adds to an already huge game, and Isles in particular revitalized my interest in the game and its history.

Shivering Isles doesn't do that much to improve gameplay, there is some interesting additional weapons and magic, but it plays largely the same. What's great about it is how it steps up the enjoyability of the atmosphere. If you get into it, the Elder Scrolls series has some interesting lore and really intricate detail to it, although that's somewhat obscured by the blandness of Cyrodill, the province of Tamriel Oblivion mostly takes place in. That's not a problem with the expansion, which ships you over to the realm of Sheogorath, one of the other Daedric princes, who happens to be completely insane. Instead of lush hills and deciduous forests, the landscape is peppered with gigantic plants and mushrooms and all sorts of winding paths. Every resident is almost as crazy as Sheogorath in their own, unique way, and in contrast to Oblivion's pervasive seriousness, Shivering Isles is genuinely funny. It's always fun to meet new people and discover exactly what psychosis is bothering them that day. Sheogorath is the star attraction, and as far as talking heads that serve only to give you your next quest go, he's one of the most entertaining to listen to.

There's improvement in the amount of choice you have, too. Many quests in Oblivion gave you some choice about which way to go with a certain dilemma and the consequences varied, but those were mostly isolated incidents. There are a few choices you have in Isles that have real resonance with how the rest of the entire game plays out. It's still mostly the same, but it's different enough that your decisions seem to have an actual impact. In addition to all these design improvements, it's still an entertaining, rewarding RPG, and my only real complaint is that too many of the side quests are really just fetch quests, even if what you're fetching is more interesting than it usually is. There's still plenty I haven't seen, but I'd recommend it to anyone who has any interest in the series.

Game Archive 2

Here's the rest of the game stuff I've written in the last half year.

Role Playing Games


I used to think I didn't like role playing games. Then I realized it was a stupid thing to think. I loved Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I love The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I'm currently DMing a group of Dungeons & Dragons players. I like games that incorporate RPG-style character improvement like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the Ratchet and Clank sequels. I don't dislike role playing games, I dislike Japanese role playing games, or at least the traditional idea of them.


What I like about RPG's is the freedom to create your own story they grant you. Obviously tabletop games take this to the extreme, you can basically do anything the DM can make a ruling on. But video games can get away with a bit less because of the production values and the interesting story they (hopefully) bring. You can customize your character to be good at what you want to be good at and have some choice about what to do next. Sometimes the main story is pretty linear, but that's okay because you at least have some choice about how you go about it.

Japanese RPG's aren't like this. Some have customizable characters, but others only give you superficial ability choices while limiting the cast to whatever basic job they're supposed to have. And of course, you can't expect a non-linear experience, there's probably some side quests, but the main game is a straight line. I don't define role playing games by stat building, I define them by what the name means - you inhabit a role in the game's setting, and it's hard to do that when you're just being strung along whatever story they've cooked up.

I don't want to come off like I hate all Japanese RPG's, I've admittedly had little experience with them, mostly restrained to the 3D Final Fantasy games. I'd like to expand my horizons and give some more games a fair shake, but I'm really just not interested enough to devote all the time it would take with my busy College schedule.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)


It's another Zelda game, and what that has come to mean is some extremely well-designed dungeons, fun bosses, and a grand old time rife with adventure. I do have a few problems though. It definitely beats The Wind Waker in world design, as it's easy to make a countryside with mountains and deserts and all sorts of terrain more interesting than an ocean, but I honestly prefer WW's visual approach. Unlike TP's "realistic" graphics, WW will still look good in ten years, and I think the cartoony look better matches the series' constant goofy breaks from the otherwise serious tone.

The pacing of the story seemed a little off to me, you learn too much too quickly and not a lot happens later on in the game. Also, it's really way to easy. Every single boss was a piece of cake. Combat was designed so enemies defend themselves better, but the only thing in the game that does more than one heart of damage to you is falling into lava. I guess I'm complaining a lot, but it's just because I love Zelda and I think this could have been better.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (PS2)


I wasn't sure about this one for a lot of the time I was playing it. Most of the new gameplay features add depth but detract from the fun, in my opinion. Limited inventory space, having to use camouflage, feed yourself, and mend your wounds and breaks sounds cool and realistic, but it just adds a ton of menu navigation to the normal gameplay experience. I don't think it really enhanced my experience needing to change my uniform when I move from the jungle to the inside of a building or click on a few different items to stop me from bleeding away any more health in a tight spot.

I was also concerned about the story, I was one of many who was fed up by the direction MGS2's story went by the end, but since then I've come to appreciate it more, and MGS3's tale didn't seem as twisty and interesting, perhaps in response to that backlash. MGS3 has more of a focus on character and emotion than political quadruple-crosses, and ends up being the most satisfying and best story in the series, in my opinion. And let's be honest here, thanks to the series' deep but increasingly dated and clumsy gameplay engine, the story is why we play Metal Gear. I don't have to tell you the visuals are amazing, and the sound is quite good too, well acted as always, and with some good music and maybe the best use of a classic theme I've ever seen near the end.

Subsistence also has some great special features, especially the inclusion of the first two games from the MSX (this being the first time MG2 is available legally in the US) and the hilarious Secret Theater.

No One Lives Forever (PC)


I got the first No One Lives Forever game when it came out in late 2000, but thanks to a frustrating series of events, I didn't complete it until six years later. The game ran poorly on my Windows 98 POS computer, and stuttered its way through outdoor environments even at the lowest settings. I didn't advance far before the computer crapped out and I lost my save, and lost my interest for a while. Later we got a new machine, and the game ran perfectly. I got much farther in the game before the hard drive pooped out and I lost my save again. In the Fall of 2005, I got my own computer, which kicked the old one's ass, and checked the game out, but was preoccupied and didn't get around to actually playing through it a year later. Despite this long, painful road to completion, I still saw how good a game it was.

It doesn't have the amazing gameplay and physics engine of Half-Life 2, and some of the cinemas seem awkward, but it's quite a good stealth-based shooter. I say stealth-based, but rarely do you actually have to be stealthy, most of the time you can just cap fools as you please. The game's brilliance mostly comes from the writing, which is both hilarious and intelligent for most video games. It creates a fun and self-referential world that's fun to be a female James Bond in. If you never played it, you should look past the now-dated engine and graphics and give it a go.

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way (PC)


It didn't take me long after beating the first to get right on the second, which continues in the spirit of the first pretty well. The graphics are remarkably better considering the game was released only two years later, although it's mostly cosmetic enhancements to a now-seriously dated engine, especially looking at the gravity and other physics.

The game itself is mostly solid, with fun, stealthy shooting, but there are a few gripes I have. They added respawning enemies that make it annoying when you're scouring the area for every intelligence item and extra objective you can find and they start looking for you upon finding dead bodies. The flashlight is now an inventory item instead of something you can just turn on while still shooting. I'm just not as big a fan of this game's pacing, it starts off very strong but the formula becomes more transparent as you go on and it seems a bit anticlimactic with the boring final level, and the game's apparent refusal to kill off any characters. The first game saw you infiltrating and causing havoc in various heavily defended fortresses, NOLF 2 spends too much time making you run around India and in abandoned stations in the snow. It's still a good game, just a slight disappointment after the first.

Okami (PS2)


If you have a PS2 and don't play Okami, you're a bad person. It's simply a fantastic game. The graphics are stunning - I don't care about the GE Force 8800 or the new current generation of high definition systems, Okami is the best looking game I've seen, thanks to the great art syle and amazing cel-shading technology that makes it look like a living watercolor painting. This is an opinion of course, if you'd rather look at super high-def ruins in Gears of War, that's just fine. The game also has great music, although I can't say all the audio is good. Okami's main flaw is the voice acting - it's text based, and instead of silence or some beeps, you get garbled snippets of voice (like Banjo-Kazooie) that's tolerable at first but gets very annoying after long bouts of extended exposition.

It's not just great because of its aesthetic qualities though, it IS a video game, and a good one. I can say without doubt it is the best Zelda-style action adventure that isn't actually a Zelda game I've played. It's easy, but still fun, thanks to the Celestial Brush, which you use to draw your special attacks and tools instead of having to sort through an inventory. The different brush powers are all easy to learn and remember, and they give Okami a unique flair to the traditional exploring and combat. The dungeons are more focused on using your powers to advance forward, the puzzles are less Zelda-style solving something to open a door and more using your techniques and platforming skills to reach that door. The combat is a little simple, but still cool thanks to slick attacks, a variety of weapons, the use of the brush techniques, and interesting enemy design.

The story should also be mentioned, I wasn't expecting a lot, but it's actually quite good. The character development is great and there are some cool twists and turns, and it's all enriched by the Japanese mythology that surrounds it. Overall, Okami is a cohesive, beautiful work of art and it's a damn shame no one is playing it.

Sam and Max: Culture Shock (PC)


Being the first of six parts of a "season" of new content, and costing only 9 dollars, Culture Shock is allowed to be short. And it is short. Even if you make sure to click on everything and see every last snippet of dialog, it will only take you a couple hours to see all there is to see. The jokes are a bit hit and miss, but they mostly hit. Some of the puzzles are a little annoying or take some cajoling to get working, but it's pretty satisfying when you figure out what you need to do. This isn't some major new release to get sucked into, it's a charming, enjoyable bit of nostalgic adventure gaming. Take a break from whatever hardcore game you're plowing through and have some relaxing fun.

Sam and Max: Situation: Comedy (PC)


Where Valve and Ritual have failed, Telltale Games has succeeded... not in making a good game, but in getting episodic gaming right. Like the first, this chapter of Sam & Max's new adventures is only a couple hours in length, but it hasn't been that long since I played the last one, so the memory is still fairly fresh in my mind, and the desired effect is achieved... a somewhat continuous gaming experience. It's still a little too easy, and some of the celebrity humor is lacking, but it's a mostly funny, enjoyable experience on the cheap.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)


I am conflicted. The main focus of Shadow of the Colossus is obviously the battle with the Colossi, and the game completely nails this. The fights are amazing. I found about 2 to be more annoying than fun, the rest were a blast to run around, scale, and smite. But what if this was a Zelda-style action-adventure game with puzzle-filled dungeons and towns scattered around the vast countryside with people to interact with (the towns are less necessary), and the Colossus battles were the focus and the main conflict, not the entire game? The Colossi ARE awesome, but that's all there is. The environment is beautiful but really not very interesting to explore. I would truly love this game if it just felt complete. Also, I wasn't a fan of the controls, and how when you take damage from a strong attack, you fall over, and it takes you about ten seconds to stand up, which usually gives the enemy enough time to prepare and hit you again, repeating the process. If you can't tell from my description, this is NOT FUCKING COOL. Although I really dug the connection to ICO.

Best Games of 2006

It's a little late for yearly picks, but it took me this long to finish some of the games I wanted to play. No arbitrary number of selections, just my personal list of notable, great games. It came out to a round number anyway, but that's not a guarantee.

Best of 2006

5. Bully (PS2)


This is partly a feel-good choice, but I just really liked that Rockstar was able to put out a game this enjoyable, and you can't even kill anyone. Sure, you can beat the crap out of people and threaten them and hit them with bottle rockets, but no dying. Seriously, it's funny as hell, charming, and honestly a lot of fun to play.

4. Gears of War (360)


A lot of things about Gears are imperfect besides the graphics, making it really hard for a shooter, already limited by its genre, to do much better than this, so it's quite a rousing success. I wanted to play Gears for a long time, and then I got the chance, enjoyed it while it lasted, and then moved on. I marveled at the presentation. I laughed at a lot of things, like the probably-too-frequent glitching, the throwaway taunting dialogue ("Eat shit and die!"), the bizarre moment where Marcus and his pal turn from grizzled war vets into Vaudeville characters slipping down a wet incline, and the ridiculous carnage of a chainsaw to the face. I wondered about the lack of good weapon selection - there are two assault rifles, one of which blows; a shotgun I never saw as valuable since being in close combat was so dangerous; and a few situation-specific weapons that didn't have enough available ammunition to really spend time playing with. I also wondered why they tried so hard to make a completely harmless enemy like the Grub seem scary. I did have a lot of fun running for cover and shooting ugly dudes in the face, though.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)


Twilight Princess is a great game that still manages to be overrated. When I hear Jeremy Parish say things like (slightly paraphrasing) "It's like Ocarina of Time, but much better," I literally cringe. Yeah, TP improves on OoT in a number of ways, most notably in graphics and difficulty of block pushing puzzles. But Ocarina of Time was freaking revolutionary. You can easily bring up how much A Link to the Past influenced that one, and I won't argue with you because I didn't play it, but OoT still set the formula for what three-dimensional Zelda games are, and more importantly, how three-dimensional action adventures in general are basically supposed to work. TP doesn't surpass that just because it managed to set the franchise record for most elements and mechanics directly lifted from previous games in the series.

I don't completely agree with Jeff Gerstmann's score, but he's totally right in his points that it's a well-designed, well-executed game that doesn't stray from a formula that's worked in the past but is maybe a little dated. And just because they haven't done voices in the past doesn't mean that's a defining Zelda characteristic. People said the same thing about Metal Gear Solid's camera until they realized the one in Subsistence was much better. I'm probably bashing my number three game too much, so I'll stop. Excellently crafted game, not the best.

2. Okami (PS2)


I kind of wanted this to be my game of the year, though I must admit it isn't. It is a tremendous game though. Amazing art, excellent use of traditional Japanese music sty le and storytelling, great level and gameplay design. Like Zelda, it was too easy, but at least it seemed to be challenging in spots. The faster pace of combat and more clever use of brush techniques instead of a large inventory made it more satisfying, and the final boss at least seemed daunting, even if it really wasn't. It really is a shame games like this don't get played, but at least the will of its developers lives on in SEEDS.

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)


No game from 2006 gave me more entertainment than Oblivion did. It's not just a quantity thing though, I didn't calculate this by hours of enjoyment. When it came out, I played the crap out of it, and I played the crap out of it again on two other occasions during the year. I still intend to go back and play the crap out of it some more, since there's plenty of quests I haven't finished. I haven't been a vampire, or even got that far in the main storyline. There's just so much to do and it's all so well realized. The melee combat is spotty in places but quite good for an RPG, the stealth is as good as you'd want, and the depth of the magic system is great. So much of the crap that you don't need is thrown out, but there if you want it. A lot of Morrowind fans preferred that game, and I won't argue against them because I didn't play it, but I can't imagine myself doing so, since Oblivion does so much in terms of the technology that it would probably feel ancient. It's not a big choice for favorite, but it's definitely mine.

Notable Exception

Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC)

I had a great time with it, but as much as I liked it, I can't bring myself to include something that only lasted four hours in a real "game of the year" discussion.

Delayed Entries

These are games that were released before 2006 but I didn't get around to playing until then and warrant mentioning.

Beyond Good and Evil (PS2)

The fact that not enough people played it caused people who did to overcompensate by talking it up too much, which I contributed to. The same thing happened with ICO. Both very good games, both not quite deserving of their adulation.

Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (PS2)

I actually played the Special Edition, which came out in 2006, but I don't count rereleases. It rightly brought respect back to the franchise, as it's quite the slick, fun, challenging action game. The thing is, it has to reinvent itself a little more fully and seperate from the whole survival horror thing/vibe completely. That was cool when Resident Evil still sucked, but times have changed.

God of War (PS2)

Another good game I think is overrated by most. Yeah, the combat looks cool, but any joker off the street can pull off a sweet looking combo. Just because the animations look nicer doesn't make your combat deeper than a normal button masher.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)

Again, I actually played Subsistence, but I don't count rereleases. Great story, really good gameplay, I'm really glad I didn't have to play with the other camera (except for the final battle for some reason).

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)

The Colossus battles were totally, completely awesome, and the story was interesting, reserved, and well-presented. The rest of the game could have been better.

I actually played a ton of great games in 2006. A landmark year, really. I'll also do posts like this for music and movies, but not baseball moments of games or anything like that, for two reasons.

1) I don't watch enough non-Yankee games for it not to turn out horribly biased.
2) Even with just Yankee games, there weren't that many amazing moments last year. They left early in the playoffs, and it's kind of hard to have strong, memorable moments during the regular season, in fact, I can only think of one that really stands out, and it's not the five games in four days massacre of the Red Sox in August, which was horribly painful to watch. I've never seen so much mediocre pitching in such a short time.

No, I'm thinking of a game against Texas back in May, when they Yankees were behind 9 to 0 in the second and game back to win on their final at bat. It was amazing in several ways.

1) Obviously, the huge come-from-behind win.
2) I actually predicted this would happen when they were losing 9-0. Proof.
3) They won the game despite three of their starters being out with injuries (still leaving them with 6 all-stars, huge payroll, I know, shut up).
4) They actually had to come back twice. They took an 11-10 lead, but lost that and were down 12-11 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
5) Jorge Posada was absolutely ridiculous. He blocked the plate and got absolutely plowed by Mark Teixera, but he held on and saved the run. This isn't a huge deal, but he stayed in the game, and drove in five runs, including two on a walkoff home run that won it. It was the only time all season I actually shouted in joy when the Yankees won.

Anyway, yeah, that was the Yankees season.