Final Countdown: Top Five Games of 2011
I probably should have gotten my ‘best of 2011’ selections up while it was still, well, 2011. Instead, I’ve been struggling to whittle my choices down. Make no mistake, the last year was a phenomenal one for video games and the people who play them. It was a year where even usually-trite sequels upped their game (pardon the pun), and we saw some genuinely fantastic new IPs hit the market. I could easily have done a top ten, twenty, thirty.... But no, I intended to pick five, and five I have picked. These are the games that excited, engaged and entertained me most over the last year, and I can easily see myself going back to them again and again in future.
5: STACKING
Although it saw an expansion, The Lost Hobo King, Stacking was a relatively short game, released as a digital exclusive for 360, PS3 and PC. With a bit more content – at least enough to justify an on-disc release – this would have found a much larger audience, something it really deserved. However, unlockable extras and multiple solutions for each challenge gave the game a lot of replay value, and the innovative style makes it well worth jumping into.
4: LA NOIRE
See, as much as I love them, the point and click adventures I loved are a dead genre to all but a committed community of hardcore enthusiasts who – thankfully – still gets the odd bone thrown their way. However, the ideals of those games, best epitomised by the likes of The Longest Journey or Broken Sword, are reborn in LA Noire. Primarily, it’s a story-driven title with well-realised characters. The item finding puzzles of old are updated in the form of crime scene investigations and suspect interrogations, with only awkward driving sections betraying the game’s supplication to ‘mainstream’ gamers.
Enjoyable on its own merits, I can only hope that LA Noire also serves as the harbinger of a new wave of adventure games, updated for the 21st century – even if developer Team Bondi is currently a cold case itself.
3: EL SHADDAI: ASCENSION OF THE METATRON
Playing as warrior priest Enoch and aided by a snarky assistant from the divine (who, obviously, endlessly chats away on his mobile phone), you’ll be hunting down seven angels with the aim of preventing a genocidal flood from wiping out life on Earth. While the gameplay has an elementary mix of platforming and role-playing, an intuitive and fast-paced battle system keeps the adrenaline riding high throughout.
El Shaddai may not make much sense but it’s bizarre inspiration and entrancing looks make it one of the most original games of the last year, and heavenly to play to boot. Simply rapturous.
2: DARK SOULS
Yet the joy of Dark Souls comes with learning where the hazards and traps lie, how best to navigate the brilliantly realised medieval settings and which tactics – magic, weapons or the environment itself – to best employ in order to survive. Your persistence is rewarded with a feeling of true mastery of the world around you, tempered by a sense that behind the next unexplored corner could lie your next doom. It’s a pleasure to play a title that’s not afraid to put some people off as it pursues its own vision, rather than water its experience down for mainstream, mass-market appeal. Dark Souls is a game that is as gloriously, unapologetically challenging as any 8- or 16-bit legend of days gone by, and all the better for it.
1: PORTAL 2
Portal 2’s real strength though is its ability to tell a remarkably deep story through non-linear means. From Chell’s awakening to her journey through the bowels of Aperture Science’s decrepit subterranean enclosures, up to her final confrontation with the hilarious droid Wheatley (Stephen Merchant’s finest role? I would say so.), the game is simply a marvel. Throw in a sublime co-op mode, compelling DLC and the fact that there’s literally no negative critique I can think of for it, and Portal 2 easily places as my top game of 2011.
Honourable Mentions:
Ruins – A dog chasing rabbits in a shadowy dreamworld isn’t often the stuff of great games but this short, striking indie release from Cardboard Computer struck a particular chord in me. There’s no real point or purpose, though snippets of dialogue reveal meaning as you progress. Simple and beautiful, this is all the argument anyone needs to validate games as an art form.
Skyrim – Bethesda’s latest entry in the Elder Scrolls saga is as brilliant, engaging, and entertaining as could be expected, and I fully stand by the five stars I awarded it in my review for Empire. However, precisely because the game is as sterling an effort as anticipated also means it offered no great surprises – Bethesda knew they had a hit on their hands and played it safe. Factor in the glitches and bugs that have plagued a lot of players and it has to be a narrow miss for my top five.
Gears of War 3 – This is going to sound like a backhanded compliment but it wasn’t until the end of the series that Epic’s sci-fi shooter won me over. I appreciated but never overly got into the first two games but the tweaks to controls and the – in my opinion – top tier story of number three made it one of my favourite of the year. For my money, it’s arguably the best in series, and I can only hope the developers move onto new properties now and resist going back to the well again.
