Bill’s 2011 In Review

2011 is gone, and games web­sites every­where are just wrap­ping up their end-of-year lists and Game of the Year win­ners.  The Ontological Geek is no dif­fer­ent, but rather than choos­ing a Game of the Year or series of awards for the web­site as a whole, Matt and I are both going to offer our thoughts on the games of 2011, their highs and lows, dis­ap­point­ments and… appoint­ments…?  Anyway.

I did­n’t play any­thing like all the impor­tant games of 2011, but I played more new games this year than I have ever in the past, so I thought I’d sin­gle out a few for awards and then break down my thoughts on each of the games I played.  Matt has also done so, and his list can be found here.

Of the games that were released in 2011, I played, in rough­ly this order:

Dragon Age II
L.A. Noire
Portal 2
Homefront
Dead Space 2
Bastion
Gears of War 3
Catherine

As such, any “bests” or “favorites” found below are obvi­ous­ly con­fined to this list.  There are a lot of games this year I did­n’t get around to play­ing, and so I obvi­ous­ly do not have an opin­ion about whether or not they are any good.  In case you’re curi­ous, here is a list of games I did­n’t play which I feel I prob­a­bly ought to have, either because they inter­est me or to main­tain a sense of cul­tur­al lit­er­a­cy:

Arkham City
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
From Dust
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Call of Warfield: Modern Battleduty 3 (I kid, I kid)
The Binding of Isaac
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Sword & Sworcery EP

So, with that out of the way:

The Winners Are:

Best Game (Game of the Year): Portal 2

Favorite Game: Bastion 

Favorite/Best Soundtrack: Darren Korb’s for Bastion, though L.A. Noire’s sound­track was also stel­lar.

Best Male Voice Actor: Logan Cunningham, Bastion, and Stephen Merchant, Portal 2

Best Female Voice Actor: Ellen MacLain, Portal 2

Least Favorite Scene For All the Right Reasons: The Eye Poke Machine, Dead Space 2 

The “I’m an Artist, Dammit” Award for: What The Hell is this Great Scene Doing in this Mediocre Campaign: Cole’s Thrashball Flashback, Gears of War 3 

Favorite New Character: Pretty much the entire NPC cast of Dragon Age II.

Most Annoying New Character: Catherine, from Catherine.

Best New Gun: The javelin gun from Dead Space 2 pro­duced a lot of gig­gles.

Best Graphical Style: Bastion.

Best Facial Animation, Most of the Time, Except Sometimes When it’s Really Horrifying, But Seriously, it’s Amazing Technology: L.A. Noire.

Best Terrible Remixes of Great Classical Music: Catherine.

Best Polish: Dead Space 2

Worst Understanding of What Colorado Looks Like: Kaos Studios, for Homefront

Best Hats: L.A. Noire.

And now, for thoughts. 

Dragon Age II

Of all the games that were to come out in 2011, this was the one I was most excit­ed about. Consequently, it was the game which dis­ap­point­ed me the most.  It’s far from the worst game on this list, but it left me feel­ing unful­filled and slight­ly sul­lied.  I loved Origins, for all its weird quirks, graph­i­cal bland­ness, uneven design and anachro­nis­tic clunk­i­ness, but I nev­er­the­less appre­ci­at­ed and antic­i­pat­ed the sequel’s promised refine­ments in graph­ics, com­bat sys­tem, and style. II promised a more tightly-focused story and a Mass Effect 2 level of pol­ish and effi­cien­cy, and though I tried to avoid look­ing at the web­site pre-launch so as to avoid spoil­ing any­thing, any time I did stum­ble onto a trail­er or pre­view, I found myself more and more excit­ed.  I pre-ordered the game in time to get the free upgrade to the Signature Edition, and my wife actu­al­ly left the house for a con­fer­ence about the time DAII came out, so when the game arrived, it was just me and Hawke for three straight days.

There is a lot to like about Dragon Age II, and some of my very favorite moments in 2011 hap­pened in Kirkwall.  The writ­ing, both in terms of dia­logue and over­all nar­ra­tive struc­ture, is phe­nom­e­nal.  The char­ac­ters are fas­ci­nat­ing, beau­ti­ful, and very well-acted.  I can’t pick a favorite from among them, and the rela­tion­ships they devel­op with Hawke and each other are com­plex and won­der­ful.  The Arishok is pos­si­bly my favorite antag­o­nist (I won’t say vil­lain) in all of gam­ing.  The graph­i­cal over­haul gave the game a much-needed unique­ness, and elves should always be Welsh.

At the end of the sec­ond act, I was aware of prob­lems, but was for­giv­ing them with­out ques­tion because of the game’s many strengths.  By the end of the third act, how­ev­er, I was begin­ning to be upset that I had pur­chased the game.  It became increas­ing­ly clear that the game had been rushed out the door long before it was real­ly fin­ished, and some of what I had been will­ing to for­give as odd quirks in the first two acts became less and less for­giv­able as they hap­pened more and more.  Most of the quests hap­pen in the same five or six copy-pasted dun­geons, the stream­lin­ing and refine­ments made to the com­bat and inven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tems left them shal­low and neutered, but still fid­dly.  At the halfway mark, the game has most­ly run out of unique ene­mies, and the third-act character-specific quests (which, to this point, have been the heart and soul of the game) are pale, impo­tent imi­ta­tions of their pre­de­ces­sors.

I felt almost embar­rassed as I played the game, as though I had snuck a peek at some­one’s rough draft.  I don’t know whose fault it was that the game was rushed out in a year, but that per­son should be ashamed of him or her­self.  It is clear that the team real­ly loved this game, that a lot of heart and soul went into mak­ing it, and I imag­ine that with even six months’ more time, DAII would have been impec­ca­ble.

As it is, I’m not sure what it aver­ages out to.  I can never stay too mad at it, because all of the good parts are real­ly good.  Regardless, it’s dis­ap­point­ing to see some­thing come so close to great­ness and fail because of exec­u­tive med­dling.

Should You Play It: Maybe.  The best parts of this game are some of the best stuff I’ve ever played in a game, so if you can stom­ach some dis­ap­point­ment, it’s worth your time.  But if you’re look­ing for a com­plete, beau­ti­ful game, then you should look else­where. 

L.A. Noire

Team Bondi’s 1940s noir police pro­ce­dur­al was one of 2011’s most talked-about games, and there is a lot in it to like.  I ulti­mate­ly left the game feel­ing unsat­is­fied, but I’m glad to have played it.  The biggest prob­lem with Noire is the way its pieces absolute­ly do not fit togeth­er.  First and fore­most, it has absolute­ly no busi­ness pre­tend­ing to be a sand­box.  The side quests would be laugh­able if they weren’t vague­ly insult­ing, and the city lacks any sem­blance of life.  The best descrip­tion I’ve ever heard is that the city feels like a movie set: incred­i­bly detailed, with a lot of actors every­where doing their best to look authen­tic, but com­plete­ly inau­then­tic and life­less.  Keep every­thing else and make it a lin­ear game, and it would become infi­nite­ly bet­ter.

Sometimes the design­ers clear­ly did­n’t know what they want­ed the play­er to be doing.  Nearly every other sus­pect tries to run away from or punch Detective Phelps, and the chase sequences are not near­ly engag­ing enough to war­rant such rep­e­ti­tion.  While I sus­pect they were includ­ed to help keep the play­er inter­est­ed and change up the pace, they end up monot­o­nous, and draw atten­tion away from the game’s many strengths.  Further, it must be said that the Homicide desk is ter­ri­bly put togeth­er.  While the indi­vid­ual cases are okay, the over­ar­ch­ing plot they attempt­ed to have tie them togeth­er is awful and obvi­ous­ly shoe-horned in, some­times result­ing in the play­er hav­ing to accuse obvi­ous­ly inno­cent peo­ple of mur­der sim­ply because the game has­n’t got­ten around to reveal­ing the (shock­ing­ly obvi­ous) twist that all of the mur­ders are com­mit­ted by the same per­son.  I would say “spoil­er alert” before that, except that Cole and the play­er both fig­ure this out with­in min­utes of inves­ti­gat­ing the very first corpse.

All of that said, I’m actu­al­ly real­ly happy L.A. Noire exists.  When it works, it real­ly works.  The sound­track is superb, the city looks gor­geous, and although the real plot does­n’t begin until the sec­ond half of the game, it’s inter­est­ing and deserv­ing of study (if more than a lit­tle rushed).  The facial ani­ma­tion is stel­lar if occa­sion­al­ly unset­tling, Earle, Phelps and Biggs are legit­i­mate­ly neat char­ac­ters, and there are a few cases I recall quite fond­ly.  There were moments when I real­ly felt like a detec­tive, paw­ing through a crime scene for evi­dence or inter­ro­gat­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly eva­sive wit­ness.  Other times, its social com­men­tary worked very well.  There is a very mature story about how sol­diers re-integrate into civil­ian life hid­den away in L.A. Noire.  I just wish they had spent more time on it.

Where Dragon Age II was dis­ap­point­ing because of its wast­ed poten­tial, L.A. Noire is clum­sy and awk­ward in the way a new­born is.  It ends up actu­al­ly being kind of endear­ing, and you want to encour­age it because you know that at some point, some of these ideas could be used to make some­thing truly great.

That said, every Rockstar-published game I’ve ever played has left me feel­ing a bit like this.  There are supreme­ly tal­ent­ed peo­ple work­ing on these games, but I some­times won­der if they ever actu­al­ly talk to each other, and why the wholes never quite add up to the sum of their parts.

Should You Play It: Yes, if you’re inter­est­ed in try­ing some­thing new and clum­sy.  But try to be char­i­ta­ble, and don’t do any of the sid­e­quests.  They are com­plete­ly not worth your time.

Portal 2

Most of what I want to say about Portal 2 has already been said by Oli Welsh in his review of Portal 2 for Eurogamer.  There, he stat­ed that while Portal had a num­ber of great jokes, “Portal 2 is that rare beast, an actu­al video game com­e­dy.”

This is exact­ly cor­rect.  It’s not just a game with jokes in it, it’s all about humor and enter­tain­ment.  The dia­logue is noth­ing short of bril­liant, but every­thing from the physics to the graph­ics to the char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion is impec­ca­bly designed to make the play­er smile or laugh.

Portal 2 is so good you almost don’t real­ize how good it is.  Like all Valve games, it’s so sub­tle in its atten­tion to detail that it’s very easy to glide right through most of the game with­out notic­ing the var­i­ous men behind the cur­tains mak­ing your every sec­ond much smoother and more engag­ing than it might have been.  Further, you spend so much of your time laugh­ing that you’re not real­ly pay­ing atten­tion to any­thing else.  I haven’t had so much sheer, unadul­ter­at­ed fun with a game in a very long time.

In this way, what Portal 2 reminds me of most is Young Frankenstein, which I will always argue is the great­est com­e­dy every made.  Like Young Frankenstein, every aspect of it is cal­i­brat­ed to be enter­tain­ing, and the humor flits wild­ly from bla­tant slap­stick to sub­tly intel­li­gent with such ease that it never hits the same note twice.  Both are fine­ly craft­ed works of art that stand unchal­lenged in their fields.

We spend a lot of time here at the Ontological Geek and in the broad­er gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty try­ing to empha­size games that are Great Works of Art, games that try to do truly amaz­ing things, teach us about the human con­di­tion and pro­duce great emo­tion­al reac­tions.  This is well and good, but some­times I think we for­get that games can also be fun.  Portal 2 aims to be both fun and funny, and suc­ceeds so well at both that it’s my pick for the best game of the year.

Comedy is impor­tant.  It’s not a less­er art, it’s just a dif­fer­ent one, and a truly great com­e­dy deserves just as much praise as any more “seri­ous” endeav­or.  Portal 2 is not per­fect, but it is some­thing real­ly spe­cial.

Should You Play It: Yes.  Why haven’t you already played it?  Why are you still read­ing this if you haven’t played it?  STOP READING THIS AND PLAY IT. 

Homefront

I would­n’t have both­ered with Homefront except for two rea­sons.  First, much of the action takes place in west­ern Colorado, an area very dear to my heart, and sec­ond, through­out devel­op­ment, Kaos Studios released state­ments like this one, indi­cat­ing that they were not inter­est­ed in mak­ing a com­plete­ly gener­ic shoot ’em up FPS with real­is­tic trap­pings, but rather intend­ed to make a game which showed some­thing of the seri­ous­ness of war, and dealt with the hor­rors of an enemy occu­pa­tion.

As it is, they made a com­plete­ly gener­ic shoot ’em up FPS with real­is­tic trap­pings.  It’s not awful, but it’s not any good, either, and what­ev­er aspi­ra­tions it might have had toward emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty were appar­ent­ly for­got­ten by most of the dev team as soon as the cam­eras quit rolling.

Also, that’s real­ly not at all what Montrose looks like.  Maybe before you set most of a game in a real town, you should do some research about what the town looks like?

Should You Play It: Nope.  If you just real­ly have to get your mod­ern shoot­er fix, I sup­pose it’s bet­ter than noth­ing, but it’s real­ly not worth your time. 

Dead Space 2

I liked Dead Space well enough, but was not all that com­mit­ted to play­ing the sequel.  I only picked it up because Matt (who has always been the big­ger hor­ror fan) kept pes­ter­ing me about it.  When I final­ly did pick it up to get him to quit pes­ter­ing me, I was very glad I did.  DS2 is not the best game I’ve ever played, but it was an aston­ish­ing amount of fun.  It’s not sub­tle in its scares, but it was legit­i­mate­ly tense in places, and although the plot and char­ac­ters weren’t any­thing to write home about, they were engag­ing enough to keep me mov­ing for­ward, which is more than can be said for many games.

The mon­sters were as squicky as ever, the new guns were vis­cer­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing, and the whole game was pol­ished to a mir­ror sheen.  Further, I appre­ci­at­ed the deci­sion to voice the previously-silent pro­tag­o­nist.  While Isaac was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly deep char­ac­ter, it was quite enjoy­able to play a game from the per­spec­tive of some­one other than a par­tic­u­lar­ly unlucky mime.  I almost always find it eas­i­er to sym­pa­thize with a voiced char­ac­ter than a silent pro­tag­o­nist (Bastion and Portal 2 except­ed). 

Should You Play It: DS2 is unlike­ly to give you any night­mares, but if you enjoyed Resident Evil 4 or any sim­i­lar third-person sur­vival hor­ror game, I think you’ll quite enjoy this one. 

Bastion 

Bastion caught me com­plete­ly by sur­prise.  Gamers are a noto­ri­ous­ly excitable lot, so when large quan­ti­ties of peo­ple kept talk­ing about how great it was, I thought I was in for anoth­er Braid: some­thing kind of neat, but most­ly pre­ten­tious and obtuse.

I played it out of a sense of cul­tur­al oblig­a­tion, and imme­di­ate­ly fell in love.  It’s beau­ti­ful, fun and styl­ish.  It car­ries itself with an econ­o­my of form that I think most AAA games could stand to emu­late, keep­ing all of the best parts of tra­di­tion­al RPG cus­tomiza­tion with­out the need­less chaff that tends to come along with them.

I won’t waste a lot of time here talk­ing about how good it is.  I did a lot of that a few months ago when it first came out.  I prob­a­bly would­n’t go as far as to call it a mas­ter­piece, the way some folks have (if only so Supergiant Games does­n’t get too full of them­selves– I want them to keep mak­ing good games, and noth­ing can stag­nate an artist so much as being told he/she’s a genius too soon), but it was unique in all the right ways and won­der­ful to play.

Should You Play It: I cer­tain­ly think so.  Because of the way it caught me so off-guard, I’m sure I have an inflat­ed opin­ion of it, but I thought it was beau­ti­ful. 

Gears of War 3

The mul­ti­play­er is a great deal of fun if you go for that sort of thing, which I do, obses­sive­ly, for about two weeks, and then I don’t any more.  I hap­pened to like the improve­ments made to Horde mode, and will prob­a­bly play it with friends off and on again for sev­er­al years yet.  But you don’t come to the Ontological Geek to hear about whether or not mul­ti­play­er modes are fun, do you?

The sin­gle play­er cam­paign is a vast improve­ment on the first two in story and sub­stance, in that it is not as active­ly offen­sive as the sec­ond nor as the­mat­i­cal­ly bar­ren as the first, but it’s still noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly stel­lar.  Karen Traviss is clear­ly a pret­ty tal­ent­ed writer who was doing the best with what she had, but I found the melo­dra­ma a bit unearned.  There are some very solid moments here and there, but the major­i­ty of it is so bom­bas­tic and over­wrought that it all just becomes so much noise.

As usual, the envi­ron­ments are gor­geous, the voice actors are very good at what they do, and that inef­fa­ble Gears feel is stronger than ever.  I enjoyed play­ing it with friends, but was still left feel­ing a bit tired by the end of the game. 

Should You Play It: Sure, if you want.  I’ll be happy to play some Horde with you on Live (WombatofDoom42), but I will always wish the single-player cam­paign had more heart and less noise. 

Catherine 

Catherine just made me angry.  I found it shal­low, bor­ing, and some­how both misan­drist and misog­y­nist at the same time. I am slight­ly torn, because I want more devel­op­ers to make games that deal with top­ics like this.  I want games to explore rela­tion­ships, sex, and other aspects of adult life.  I think games have the power, through pro­ce­dur­al rhetoric and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and lots of other neat tools, to tell us all kinds of inter­est­ing sto­ries and posit all kinds of inter­est­ing thoughts about every sub­ject.  Games can be about much more than just shoot­ing aliens or stab­bing orcs (not that there’s nec­es­sar­i­ly any­thing wrong with games that do those things).  But I want them to do a bet­ter job than this.

I can respect games which hon­est­ly try new things and fum­ble, because fair enough, art is hard.  I can’t respect games that putz around for a while and waste my time under a pre­ten­tious cover.  Catherine is two parts crap­py anime to one part unin­spired puz­zle game with ham-handed metaphors, and for all its talk of being about mature, adult rela­tion­ships, it’s shal­low and ado­les­cent.  It has a sit­com’s view of rela­tion­ships.  I’ll prob­a­bly delve into it in more gran­u­lar­i­ty and fewer pithy remarks in the next few weeks, but I did­n’t get it at all, and felt a lit­tle bit con­cerned by how many peo­ple appar­ent­ly did.  Either I missed some­thing or they did. 

Should You Play It: No, not even for cul­tur­al lit­er­a­cy.

So, that’s that!  Check out Matt’s list, and let us know what you think!

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