The Year 2011 & Its Top 10 Games I Enjoyed the Most

In 2 hours from when I'm starting to write this it'll be 2012. The year 2011 has been one crazy ride personally and game wise. This year just might have been the best time ever to be a gamer, as long as your wallet could take it. Especially November was exhausting with high profile releases coming out every week. There were a lot of quality releases on the indie side too, which is great.

2011 also came with the release of 3DS, the exciting yet once again disappointing Nintendo product. Does it have games? Well, it took almost a year but now there are the classic Mario's and Zelda's out to play, so yes now it does have games. The problem? It's a DS with a 3D effect and slightly more processing power, the 3D effect is useless and in most games unimpressive so we keep it off anyway. I agree the one game that should be played with the 3D effect on is the remake of Ocarina of Time, in there the 3D effect looks amazing along with the new textures.

On the personal side I got to study video game design, moved away from home, upgraded my PC and bought a 50" full HD TV, so life is smiling once again. Getting to study game design was a process and a frustrating one at that, with so many people wanting in and knowing that no matter how hard you try, there just might be someone better than you anyway hogging your spot. I'm glad it worked out in my favor.

Anyway, without further babbling, here is the thing that I promised to do. I did a video for my youtube channel last year and I might do one this year too, but that can wait for now. This list is based on how much I enjoyed playing the mentioned games and has nothing to do with their design choices or technical achievements. HD remakes were not taken in to account.



My Top 10 of 2011:



10. Sonic Generations

After 10 years of crappy Sonic games, Sega finally came up with the game that just might be the best in the series. Sonic Generations has equal amounts of gameplay from classic Sonic and the modern Sonic. All the levels are remakes of the older levels, from Sonic 1 to Sonic Colours. The modern levels are speedy and the classic levels are platformy. Speeding through them with the excellent soundtrack playing in the background is extremely satisfying and rewarding. The game is littered with music and artwork extras. The game is true fan service for the fans of the Sonic franchise and tons of fun.


9. Bastion

One of the best indie titles ever released, Bastion took over XBLA in one fell swoop. This isometric beat 'em up action filled game with light RPG elements kept me sitting in front of my TV for hours. The unique graphical style and how the world builds up while you explore it along with the brand new style of story telling was what made me play through the whole thing twice in one sitting. It might be not very long, but it is pure excellence.





8. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Uncharted 3 keeps up the guaranteed quality that Naughty Dog is known for with it's Hollywood-like action. It is especially surprising how the "cutscenes" are made to be so interactive. The game shows you a short sequence where one would expect the hero to handle himself, but no, the game expects you yourself to climb back up in to that plane. The level design is top notch with lots of climbing and sneaking along the way. The puzzles are challenging enough to make you think for a second, but easy enough to keep the player from getting frustrated.


7. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The stealth action genre is dying, so DE:HR was a very welcome addition to the genre. Promoted with the player having a choice between stealth or shooting wasn't really true, stealth is the only real way to go, because it gives so much more XP. I played through the game twice, once in my normal "go with the flow" way and the second time in real stealth mode with zero kills, zero alerts and no one killed, hoping I would get a challenge worthy of my big boss emblem in Metal Gear Solid 4. It didn't quite deliver that challenge, because the stealth cloak augmentation is just immensely overpowered. I had tons of fun with this one nevertheless.


6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

No, it's not my number one of the year. Skyrim came in at a bad spot. I got 40 hours in and then I had to move to the next game, because Saint's Row and Assassin's Creed came out the next week. The world is massive with tons to explore and all the guilds - especially my favorite one, the Dark Brotherhood - returned to provide me with hundreds of hours of gameplay. The combat is slightly improved yet still quite unimpressive but that didn't really concern me because I played an assassins as always. I will surely get back to Skyrim when I have the time and motivation, because the game is massive. It's probably a modern miracle it fit on one disc.


5. Catherine

Yeah that was the least pervy picture I could find.

Catherine is a very refreshing puzzle game with adult themes and great storytelling. The puzzle mechanic is very very addicting and satisfying with enough different blocks to keep it interesting through the whole game. The story has 8 different endings depending on the players morale choices and all of them were fun to watch. I spent 40 hours with Catherine and that's A LOT for a puzzle game. I saw all the endings but didn't even touch the mode where the game random generates a 100 step level, so there is still much to explore in Catherine (no pun intended I swear).


4. Batman: Arkham City

Sequel to Arkham Asylum, I expected a lot from this game and it delivered. The city is huge but the navigation still works well, the combat is stylish with a few new attack animations, double and triple counters and a few new enemy attacks, such as the knife attacks. The story was great and and the voice acting phenomenal once again. More challenge maps, more playable characters, more everything! The bigger and better Batman.


3. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

It isn't often when we are treated to a new Zelda game, but when we do it's always a jaw dropping experience. Skyward Sword adds new twists to the usual story, even if Zelda still has to be rescued this time it's not just a matter of going to a castle and beating the shit out of Ganon. Because this time around Zelda isn't even a princess. The fact that Link and Zelda are both just normal people made their characters much deeper and interesting. Slight RPG elements were added for equipment upgrading but I was glad it still didn't take too much micro management. I hope they'd just use this engine and come up with more Zeldas quicker than in 5 year sequences.


2. Xenoblade Chronicles

There haven't been all that many great JRPG's in this generation, but here is one for sure. Xenoblade Chronicles is packed with content, with tons of side quests and city management & upgrading, gem crafting etc. The superb combat of XC works perfectly and especially in the point where you figure out your optimal party setup, it is extremely satisfying. The story is well written and towards the end more and more of jaw dropping plot twists are revealed. There's easily more than a hundred hours of gameplay packed in to that disc and it won't let you down at any point. Xenoblade Chronicles is the definitive JRPG of the current generation, if not one of the best of all time. I'm probably not far off if I say XC has the best soundtrack of all time.


1. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Oh Geralt of Rivia, your new look after the first game is so awesome! Witcher 2 offered me everything I want from an RPG. It has side quests, awesome combat, characters, brilliant story, choices, minigames, crafting and check this one out... It's graphically the most beautiful game to this day, thanks to the new engine. In somewhere around chapter 1 you need to make a choice and depending on that choice the game can be completely different. And after that the story branches according to decisions. And after that it branches again and it just keeps on going. The game even has 16 different endings. The most satisfying gaming experience of 2011.





Happy new year!

My take on Assassin's Creed: Revelations SP

This entry will be about the single player portion of AC:R. There is a spoiler alert for the whole series. You have been warned.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is the fourth entry in the award winning franchise. Assassin's Creed is an action adventure game that tells about the conflict between the two factions, the assassins and the templars. In the middle of all this is the first civilization, an ancient race of people who saw the destruction of the world. Included in all of this mess is also the technology made by first civilization, most notably the apple of eden. The ultimate goal is to stop the end of the world, which is supposed to happen in 2012 where a second solar flare will raze the world of everything living. A machine called The Animus works as the games main story platform. It let's the games protagonist Desmond Miles (voiced by Nolan North) - who is an ascendant of the assassins - to live the memories of his ancestors through his DNA. So to put it short, Assassin's Creed seeks to rewrite the history in a grand way. Assassin's Creed is also known for it's cliffhangers. Every game so far has ended in a cliffhanger that makes you want to call Ubisoft and ask them "if I kill my neighbour, will you tell me how the story continues?".

First of all I wanna point out that from a design viewpoint the animus is one of the most brilliant storytelling platforms a series could have. It let's the writers and designers create infinite amounts of stories, set anywhere in the past. They can dive in to all the great conflicts, myth or real and place the assassins and templars within that conflict. They can pull out any historic character (Assassin's creed 2 and Brotherhood introduce Leonardo Da Vinci helping the assassins) and make them a friend or foe (the final objective of Assassin's Creed 2 is to kill the pope of catholic church). Even Marco Polo's father is mentioned in Revelations. This is awesome, because it adds to the immersion, making the story events and characters all seem believable. You could say the series is knocking on the fourth wall.

There's been a conflict in the interwebz about the AC:R reviews, reviewers giving the game "only" 7.5+ has pissed off a lot of people but playing the game it instantly becomes obvious that Revelations is the second worst game in the series, right after the first part. Revelations however is... not-so-good (I don't want to say bad, the game is still fucking amazing) for completely different reasons than the first game. After an hour of Revelations it becomes obvious that the concept is finally getting tiring. Revelations adds den defense, bomb crafting and hookblade to Brotherhood's equation and that's pretty much it. The story of the overall saga is awesome enough however to keep anyone in it's grasp long enough for them to complete the game. The game also wraps up nicely the stories of two introduced assassins so far, Ezio and Altaïr. It's time for Assassin's Creed 3 which should introduce something new to the series. This probably requires a two year development cycle but we'll surely hear about AC in E3 2012.

Revelations keeps many of the elements familiar from Brotherhood and mainly just introduces the new play area, Constantinople. The city is vast and has tons of stuff to do in it, but the main problem is that this is the third entry in the series to have the same stuff to do on the side of the story so it (finally) starts to get tiring.

The main story consists of two different portions. As Ezio you are to build up the Assassin faction in Constantinople and look for the five masyaf keys that Altaïr hid away with Niccolo Polos help. The location of the keys is hidden within five books and to find these books Ezio needs the help of a young librarian called Sofia. During the search for the keys Ezio is more and more attracted to Sofia and we all know what that leads to.

Acquiring the book for the keys location is always simply a matter of running to the quest start point or doing something minor like getting flowers for Sofia. The main "challenge" lies in the dungeons the keys are at. These levels always consist of simply climbing, jumping and running forward to reach the end. They are a really nice change of pace from the city environment and I personally like them so much that I would have wanted to see more of them. Especially one of the missions where you chase a templar boat through the cavern was grand.

Each time Ezio obtains a masyaf key, he unlocks a memory that's hidden in the key by Altaïr. By following these memories we see the events after Assassin's Creed 1. On top of being great fan service the sequences are interesting and gives credit to Altaïr's character. In the end the memories lead Ezio to Altaïrs library, the games ultimate goal.

The other branch of the main story is the byzantine conflict taking place in Constantinople. While building up the assassin's brotherhood, Ezio gets caught up in the ottoman conflict, where the two brothers are quarreling over the inheritance of the sultan's position. These missions mainly involve helping out the young prince Suleiman resolve the conflict. Eventually it's revealed that Ahmet is the mastermind behind the templar scheme so it goes along to just kill him.

This storyline has all the usual missions that you already know from the latter games, but there's plenty of variety too. The storyline is good and keeps the player in it's grasp, but it's not even nearly as exciting as finding the masyaf keys.

A new Assassin's Creed means new collectables and this time they are data fragments. Once again there's a 100 of them and this time there isn't even a map you can buy in game for them. From the start every 5 fragments unlock Desmond's memory where he goes from his childhood to the trip to New York. All the memories are unlocked at 30 fragments, so they're fairly easy to unlock and the rest of the fragment's don't have any use, unless you like achievement hunting like I do.

The unlocked memories are crap. They are played in first person view, going through the insides of the animus trying to avoid black data streams and using white data blocks to move around. The levels are hard to navigate and you often get stuck, not knowing where to go, which then breaks up the storytelling. The only good thing about them is the the text that's written very well and it's easy to follow along. These sequences would have been so much better if they had been just 5-10 minute cutscenes. I would have loved to watch those, the first person sequences just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Another new addition is the den defense minigame, which I hear not many have liked. I personally enjoyed it, it was also a nice change of pace from exploring the city. Den defense occurs when templars try to take back an assassin's den that you have conquered before so you have to defend it or the templars will take over it again. Only few of these popped for me during the main story which was just enough. If they would pop up constantly it'd be a real bother. The familiar sub game where you send your assassins do missions in distant lands is back and the assassins once again gain levels from completing these missions. When an assassin reaches level 10, he can start the master assassin training which involves killing some target. The first half always fails and the second part of the training unlocks when the assassin reaches level 15. Upon completing the training, assassins can be assigned to dens and so the player doesn't need to bother with the den defense of that particular den anymore. It's good that the master assassins help with the defense but it just feels like the developers didn't want the player to like the minigame to begin with and hence they help he player to seal away this "annoyance" for good. It's not such a big part of the game though, so I don't mind.

Overall I think Assassin's Creed: Revelations is an excellent game but it fails to deliver the freshness that II and Brotherhood had. It however concludes the stories of Altaïr and Ezio, and leaves the player begging for more. The repetition of old schemes is getting tiring but the game is still excellent. At this point however I'm starting to hope for Assassin's Creed 3 with some new gameplay elements and characters. Still, even if the disc only included the cutscenes, as a fan I'd still pay for it.

Kim

My take on Saints Row: The Third

This entry will have spoilers, because I will also analyze the story.

Saints Row: The Third is (obviously) the third instalment in Saints Row series developed by Volition Inc. It is a sandbox game more or less in Grand Theft Auto's footsteps. What makes Saints Row so unique is all the wacky shit that's in it. SR3 has VTOL's (vertical take off and landing) jets that shoot laser and rockets and your character can even surf on them, flaming quad bikes that blow up anything and anyone they touch, a 3 feet long purple dildo melee weapon called "The Penetrator". This melee weapon is actually so powerful that you can even blow up cars with it with just few hits. You can hijack cars by jumping through the windshield and perform all sorts of crazy wrestle moves on enemies and civilians alike. There are also new activities to perform, such as the crazy "Doctor Genki's Ethical Reality Climax" where you have to go through a bunch of rooms while killing mascots and earning money.

Judging by the trailers I started to think SR3 might actually be too over the top but after playing through it I quickly came to conclusion that it isn't, in my standards not even close. I would have actually liked to see more of the crazy stuff, because that's what makes Saints Row for me.

The story of SR3 is the one everyone has already got used to, but this time the gameplay happens in different town. Once again there are three gangs that the saints have to take care of and take control of the city and this is once again done by sabotaging the gangs and then taking care of their leaders.

In SR and SR2 you had to complete activities (such as mayhem, insurance fraud, drug trafficking) to gain respect which then unlocked more of the main story missions. In SR2 the amount of activities was just overwhelming and they mostly felt like a bother because you had to do them every once in a while to get access to more story missions which totally fucked up the games flow.

Now, one of the new brilliant design revamps in SR3 is that the activities are totally optional and there are less of them in number, hence keeping the story's flow more fluid. Completing activities simply nets you respect and money that you can use however you wish. The respect system has been revamped to be more like a leveling up system from RPG's. Getting higher respect level lets you purchase new abilities, combat advantages, gang benefits (such as vehicle delivery) and lots of other great stuff. The great thing about this is that now the respect level actually has a meaning other than breaking up your gameplay flow and it helps you during the story missions AND the activities, where as it was just an obstacle to completing the main story in the previous instalments.

When it comes to characters and dialog, I think Saints Row has always delivered. Saints Row: The Third adds new excellent characters to the cast but it does one very, very, VERY fatal mistake at the start of the game. In the second mission, Johnny Gat is killed off just like that. Bang, a 1 minute cutscene and he no longer exists. The most bad ass character in the series that has appeared full time in both SR and SR2, poof, gone in an instant. I just can't fit it in to my brain why Volition did that. Unless he doesn't actually die and does a comeback in a DLC or SR4, I would just call that bad writing. RIP Johnny.

Two old characters - Shaundi, who is as pissed about Johnny's death as I am, has been given a brand new makeover from the crack whore she was in SR2 and Pierce who is pretty much the same he was in SR2 except with fancier clothes - make a return as the main characters left and right hands. Their dialogue and voice acting is as good as it was in the previous game so I don't really have anything much to say about that.

There are a few new characters however. The first one is Zimos, a pimp who talks (or in some cases sings) all his dialogue through a staff fitted with an autotuner. All of Zimos' dialogue is rather witty and funny to hear, especially when he's talking during intense gunfights. I just couldn't help but laugh at him. The dialogue is truly excellent.

The second new character is Viola DeWinter. The DeWinter sisters lead the Morningstar gang but at one point Viola's sister gets killed and she joins the saints for revenge on the other gangs. She is voiced by Sasha Grey and I think she does a good job of it. It's not brilliant in anyway but I don't see anything that'd bother me in her perfomance.

The third new character is Kenzie something (for the life of me I can't remember her last name). Kenzie is an ex FBI agent who got fired for a reason I also can't remember and is now helping the saints to take down the cyberpunk gang "The Deckers". She's pretty nerdy and it fits her role, seeing shes taking down a cyberpunk gang.

The final new character is Angel De La Muerte, voiced by the famous wrestler Hulk Hogan. Now this is a character whose role I don't really get. His appearance in the game is so minimal that it's almost non existant. He is simply there because all the gangs have some sort of need to have a counter character who is handling the sabotages.

While I like most of the new characters, I think they all lack depth. It's not like Shaundi and Pierce are that brilliant either, but atleast I know a little bit where they are coming from because they were already in SR2. Where SR3 isn't very story focused game, I'd still like the characters and story to be there because just running around and doing random funny things gets exhausting after a while and I would have appreciated to have a slightly better narrative. I wouldn't even mind if you wouldn't have the choice to choose your next story mission, because how is the player supposed to know what's coming up next anyway, there is no real choice to begin with. If the story is made more linear it would probably be a lot better too. The choices at the end of some missions were a nice addition but in SR3 players just want to feel badass, why not give them a choice to get both bonuses somehow.

Doctor Genki's manapult in action. You crazy cat!

The gameplay mechanics work very well in SR3. There is no cover system, because the game doesn't need one. It's not realistic (and it's not supposed to be) and so the player character can take a rain of bullets and get away with it. There are health upgrades to be bought and they are not useless even though you can take more hits than you could in any other game that includes laser shooting tanks. Health upgrades are actually something I highly recommend picking up early, simply to make it easier. There are no covers... that are made of construction material, but you can grab NPC's and use them as human shields, that's all the cover you'll need.

All the cool actions such as the wrestle moves, jumping through windshield and sprinting is done using the awesome button. I think it's very logical to bind all the fast moves to one button, because after each wrestle move the player character usually keeps running forward, when hijacking a car by jumping through the windshield in 9/10 cases your intention is to drive off and sprinting is counted as a fast move for self explanatory reasons. Other than that the control scheme is very familiar from sandbox games and now driving is handled with the triggers (finally), in SR2 acceleration was binded to A/X which was just... weird.

The side activities are quit fun and theres a great variety of them. I don't have all that much to say about them, I think their design is spot on. Theres just the right amount of them around the city and they usually don't last longer than 5-10 minutes.

The amount of character customization in Saints Row: The Third is great, especially the amount of voice acting that has been done. There are 3 voices for male characters and 3 for females. The obvious choice for my male character was the voice of Troy Baker (Tales of Vesperia, Catherine) and he did a good job of it. I'll remember "Some asshole is in my pool" for ages to come. There is also a zombie voice which just does random zombie noises but I guess it wasn't very expensive to record so why the hell not.

Overall I think Saints Row: The Third is a very refreshing experience. With tons of stuff to do and all the crazy badass content it will keep players entertained for tens of hours. The story itself is around 8-10 hours but all the activities will soak another 10. There are lots of things to improve but they are not significant enough to break the gameplay experience. Saints Row 4 has already been announced to be in the works so hopefully it'll be even better experience.

The Beginning

I've thought about this for a while and now I finally made a blog. Here I will be sharing my thoughts and experiences about the video games in general, what I've been playing and thinking and what's going on in my life.

Here's the information about me in short:

Kim Puolakka
I'm 19 years old and I study at Kajaani University of Applied Sciences. I am a hardcore gamer and aspire to work in game design one day.

You can find me at twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/TheScarrend


and youtube:
http://youtube.com/TheScarrend


I'll be writing more in the future when I have the time!

Toodles