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