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

inFamous Review

I recently had the opportunity to play inFamous because of Sony’s infamous “apology package” for the infamous Great PSN Hack of 2011. But I realize I should shut up with saying “infamous” now because you’ll be hearing the word “infamous” many times in this review of inFamous.

Introduction and Story

inFamous is an open-world game structurally more similar to the likes of Spider-Man 2 rather than Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series. The player takes the role of Cole MacGrath, a bike messenger who gains electrical superpowers after the package he was delivering explodes in his hands, taking out several blocks of Empire City and forcing the federal government to quarantine the city. What follows is an entertaining story that seems harebrained and inane due to its mixed narration. inFamous constantly shifts back and forth from a third-person present narration to a first-person past style in both its gameplay and cutscenes. The mixed perspectives make the game somewhat of a confusing mess of a tale, and while this is helpful from a gameplay perspective as it minimizes cutscene time, it detracts from the game’s story as characters, motives and events are lost in the inconsistent narration.

That said, when one extrapolates the plot, value is found in the game’s twisting and fun narrative. An excellent plot-twist at the game’s conclusion nicely wraps up the tangled threads in an epic fashion. Some vaguely emotional moments, coupled with the illusion of an open-ended narrative and amusingly black-and-white moral choices, make the game’s plot more involving than it has any right to be.

Gameplay

inFamous’s gameplay shows its greatest strengths and weaknesses. Combat and navigation, for the most part, is gleeful and exhilarating. Cole’s massive variety of cool, lightning based powers is a joy to use, from his static thrusters, to his precision power and megawatt hammer, effortlessly raining chaos and destruction upon enemies is an absolute joy. Without a doubt, upgrading Cole’s powers by gaining experience points creates a sense of progression, and as a result, us players are left feeling like true badasses.

Unfortunately, Cole’s more useful powers are not introduced to the player until he has made significant progress through the game’s story, and as a result, early missions become more difficult than later missions. A high-powered sniper-rifle ability is given to the player about halfway through the campaign, thereby making the elimination of stationary turrets much easier. As a result, early-game missions featuring these turrets become difficult to the point of frustration. A lack of a New Game Plus feature feels like a missed opportunity, as the game would have greatly benefitted from the ability to replay the campaign with all powers unlocked.

The fundamental mission design is also problematic. While combat is exhilarating and free-running through Empire City collecting Blast Shards is undeniably fun, most missions come down to just these two elements, and, after playing Red Dead Redemption, a game in which I cannot remember doing the same thing twice, inFamous’s variety in its level design just doesn't measure up to other open-world games. That said, there are a few notable exceptions, including a mad rush across the game’s entire world to disable toxic balloons, a prison-defense scenario and some incredible boss battles reminiscent of Zelda.

inFamous’s gameplay makes it ultimately a flawed masterpiece, the mainstays of urban open-world games are missing here, such as reliable aim-assist, varied missions and vehicular navigation, but ultimately, inFamous proves that it doesn't need it.

Graphics and Audio

From an artistic perspective, inFamous is a bit of a mixed bag. Gorgeous hand-drawn cutscenes nail down the dark comic-book feel that the series tries to achieve, nonetheless, these moments of graphical brilliance are marred by a generically bleak urban world. Technically, the world is inconsistent and scattered with various graphical glitches such as textures that fail to load fast enough for the game, an occasionally stuttering frame-rate and environments that Cole can fall through. Bizarre facial and character animation leaves emotional moments adequate at best, laughable at worst.

inFamous’s audio works very well for the most part, the music drums up appropriate dramatic tension at the right moments and there is little to object to about the excellent voice acting. Sound effects are visceral and contribute greatly to the feeling of power and weight behind Cole’s powers.

Conclusion

inFamous is not a bad open-world game, its just an unconventional one. By focusing on intense, stylish and gleeful combat and navigation in a comic-book world, inFamous effectively eschews what we expect from open-world games to create an fresh and fun experience. In a era where games are becoming increasingly similar to each other, inFamous comes as a heroic remedy to protect creativity in open-world game-design. Recommended. 4/5