2011 Year in Review: Game of the Year

This year… has been interesting… at least from a personal perspective. But I digress, let’s talk about the games that I have played.

Catching Up on Classics: Partem Deum <—(I likely butchered that)
Last year, I picked up a Playstation 3 and set to work playing and reviewing a multitude of modern classics. I’ve continued that trend, albeit on a much larger scale, extending it to the current generation of games. In this year alone, I have played both Mass Effects, Red Dead Redemption, Oblivion, Minecraft, LIMBO, Splinter Cell, half of the Call of Duties, Dragon Age: Origins, Super Meat Boy, Jamestown, Portal 2, Resistance 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Vanquish, Terraria, Torchlight, inFamous, fl0wer, Bioshock 2 and Heavenly Sword. That barely scratches the surface.

I borrowed Red Dead Redemption from my friend Devan, and I had limited time to spend with the game and barely scratched the surface. I completed the campaign up to the <SPOILER> death of John Marston, but never played the postgame missions with Jack </SPOILER>. Nonetheless, the 20 hours that I did enjoy with the game were memorable and satisfying. Going into the game doubting that a New Mexican desert could make for an interesting environment, I was shocked to discover that Red Dead Redemption had one of the richest and liveliest game worlds to be seen in a game. Its a game that I regret not owning myself and an easy recommendation to anyone.

I bought Super Meat Boy at a Steam Sale approximately one year ago, and I have not yet beat the second world. Nonetheless, the intense difficulty and low punishment-factor not only makes SMB one of the most challenging games of the year, but one of the most consistently playable. Your reflexes will be challenged, but not your patience. This is a fine casual game that anyone should have on their hard-drive for the time between classes.

I liked inFamous. While I felt that Empire City was a bland and uninteresting place, the game redeemed itself with excellent action, buttery-smooth controls and fun powers. I wasn’t that pleased with the jarring storytelling, but was entertained through the entire duration of this flawed classic.

I hated Modern Warfare 2, the scattershot plot, rage-inducing multiplayer, cliffhanger-story and agency-robbing set-pieces failed to carry over what made the first Modern Warfare one of the best shooters ever made. That said, I did have fun with Black Ops. The conspiracy-laden story was entertaining, clear and understandable. While still linear and filled with hand-holding,the game was not as egregiously unreplayable as the previous game. For all the bashing I put on this series for spawning an unsustainable trend of copycat shooters, Zombies makes this game a guilty pleasure of mine.

My Personal Game of the Year

I have not yet played Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Arkham City or Skyward Sword, so I cannot include them in this part of the post. But for the sake of thought, here are my three top games of 2011.

Minecraft was the second 5/5 I awarded on this blog, and for good reason. It holds shocking emotional impact and touches the player’s soul in an unexpected way. The lonely freedom the player experiences is liberating in its childlike gleefulness. It is a brilliant game filled with brilliant ideas played by brilliant people. Don’t let the allegations of an unintuitive tutorial dissuade you, running the game in windowed mode with the Wiki available in the background completely alleviates this problem. The possibilities, like in life, are endless.

I love the Mass Effect games, while a mixed bag from a moral perspective, the endearing characters, epic narrative and lovable world work together to make a remarkable impact on the player. Mass Effect 2’s release on the PS3 early this year brought this brilliant series and its varied denizens to a new audience. I grew attached to a certain Scientist Salarian named Mordin, his caffeinated manner of speaking, affable dialect and homicidal humor ingrained his character into my heart. The same can’t be said about a certain Miranda Lawson, I didn’t shed a tear when that pretentious and unsympathetic douchebag was left for dead in the center of the galaxy. 

Portal 2 is the best puzzle-game ever made. The apotheosis of a movement initiated by the first Portal and expanded in Braid and LIMBO, the game exemplifies the positive trial-and-error aesthetic. The game is unspeakably difficult, but the intelligent construction of the puzzles promote rigorous experimentation and never fails to be fresh. The game is reinforced by genius writing, hilarious characters and a unique cooperative mode requiring the use of two brains. Portal 2 is great, and that does not even touch on the deep and involving feminist subtext that got even my Ethics teacher interested.

And the Winner is…

And this is what makes any Game of the Year decision so difficult. Portal 2, Minecraft and Mass Effect 2 are all great fun, intellectually and emotionally gratifying and vastly different. One is a the apotheosis of intelligent play, another is a immaculately detailed fantasy world and another is, like life, what you make of it. All I enthusiastically recommend to all and consider to be immaculate examples of brilliant game design and if I could, I would give trophies to all the studios responsible for the games and knit sweaters for their respective producers, but I can’t. So, with a smidge of regret, I declare that:

Portal 2 is my personal game of the year. The choice was difficult, and while Minecraft kept me awake through the wee hours of the morning and I will never stop loving Garrus, only Portal 2 transcended its ludic constraints to become something indescribably moving and impactful. Portal 2 was, unlike the other games, perfectly paced and never repetitive. This was an important year in gaming, and while the medium does suffer from the repetitious annual releases of gratuitously and self-indulgently violent multiplayer shooters, Portal 2 shines among these games as a beacon of hope for the medium. Play it, and look to the wide-open future with optimism.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to all!

~Kevin

Red Dead Redemption Review

I have been playing Red Dead Redemption for four months straight. I just completed the game’s story just last night. Red Dead Redemption is a game so incredible in scope, so mammoth in its ambition, so subtly flawed and so engaging in its narrative that it will leave an immutable mark upon its players and go down in gaming history as one of the most beautiful and detailed open world games of the decade.

Story

Red Dead Redemption is powered primarily by an imaginatively conceived world filled with symbolic (but not realistic) characters and very well written and often funny dialogue. John Marston, the game’s protagonist, will come across a parade of interesting people, each with their own detailed background, motives and philosophical position. Set in an unspecified region of the Southern Border in 1911 during the last days of the Wild West, Red Dead Redemption deals thematically with industrialization and the loss of cultural identity that consumerism brings. 

This theme of imperialism is communicated through John Marston’s struggle. A former gang member, government officials from the East kidnap his wife and son and will return them to him only if he were to hunt down the members of his former gang. Red Dead Redemption is a tale of a man attempting to escape from his bloody past while forces out of his control keep on dragging him back. To hunt down his targets, John embarks on an epic journey that will take him across the wilderness, through both geographic, cultural and moral boundaries.

Nonetheless, the methods through which the story is communicated are sometimes flawed. While the conversations that John has while riding with others are charming, funny and interesting, cutscenes are frequent and sometimes longer than necessary. Ludonarrative dissonance (where the player’s actions inbetween missions contradicts the behavior of the protagonist during missions and cutscenes) remains highly problematic, sometimes threatening to compromise the realism of John’s character as a whole. For example, it does not contribute to a believable character to have committed a mass murder spree in Armadillo and return to peacefully herd cattle at the MacFarlane ranch.

Gameplay

Red Dead Redemption, like Rockstar’s previous games, has of stuff available to do. Minigames and side-quests make up a wealth of content, making it very easy to become sidetracked from the game’s storyline missions. Gambling, hunting, collecting and questing opportunities are ubiquitous throughout the world. By simply wandering around, the player will come across strangers to help, hideouts to raid, animals to hunt, games to play and bounties to hunt. Succeeding where Grand Theft Auto had failed, all these activities are often very fun. The only dull activity available is herding, which is as frustrating as it would be in real life, which thankfully only occurs three times during the game’s missions.

All these activities would be undermined if the core gameplay were not fun, and thankfully, solid shooting and riding mechanics make Red Dead Redemption very satisfying and rewarding. Horses control perfectly, making the traversal of the vast world a breeze. Shooting however, takes a bit getting used to. On higher targeting levels, the crosshair is oftentimes too small to be useful and indistinguishable from the environment. Lower targeting levels solve this problem by practically putting the fighting on autopilot, targeting and tracking moving enemies even behind cover. Thankfully, the fantastic mission design and cover system make combat fun in spite of these limitations.

A new feature in Red Dead Redemption is “deadeye mode”. By pressing R3 with a weapon drawn, the player can temporarily slow time down to precisely target specific spots of the body and make extremely stylish shots. Deadeye is not as essential as it otherwise is on higher targeting modes, but nonetheless it remains integral to Red Dead Redemption’s appeal.

Red Dead Redemption is not perfect, its initial hours are tedious, exposition-heavy and gameplay light. The first few missions have Marston attempting rather menial tasks around the MacFarlane farm. Oftentimes, these tasks are frustrating (AKA: herding) and punctuated by frequent and lengthy cutscenes. Only when the player unlocks new areas and abilities does the game become much more involving. 

Graphics/Art/Audio

Graphically, Red Dead Redemption is both artistically and technically years ahead of other games. Running on Rockstar's RAGE engine, the game features advanced lighting effects, incredible character animation, detailed textures and dynamic weather effects. These engine features are used to realize an incredibly atmospheric art style featuring an incredible variety of living ecosystems and environments. Practically every kind of conceivable Western environment is present in Red Dead Redemption, forests, plains, chaparrals, deserts, canyons and mountains are all depicted in incredible detail and color. Rockstar’s art team has utilized the technical prowess of its engine to create some of the most jaw-droppingly breathtaking vistas ever seen in a video game. In a time where more and more developers create dark urban and postapocalyptic worlds, seeing a setting inspired by nature is both refreshing and pleasant.

Need more persuasion? consider the screenies below.

The game’s animation is also beyond superb and features the incredible attention to detail that permeates throughout its every part. Characters are affected dynamically by physics and move realistically, seeing the muscle ripple underneath a horse’s skin is unlike any thing seen before. Hair, long a problem in realistic games, is a non-issue here. Shots and falls look painful and will make the player wince in their mo-capped brilliance.

Finally, Red Dead Redemption is an auditory treat. Voice acting is some of the finest I have heard in years; the game is spearheaded by strong, funny and emotionally involving writing and the nuanced performance of Rob Wiethoff as Marston. Powerful sound effects lend combat special intensity and natural environments a lively placidity. Music frames narrative moments nicely and gives a strong emotional backdrop for the story to take place.

Conclusion

I am really just nitpicking Red Dead Redemption’s few flaws, those of which are a perpetual element of any open-world action-adventure game. Although ludonarrative dissonance and an overly slow start detract from the game’s impact, Red Dead Redemption is still one of the richest, most inspired and involving virtual worlds that Rockstar has conceived in the past decade. Highly recommended. 4.75/5