So, last year’s Top 5 with a twist turned out not to have much twist at all. The idea was that Bojeeva and I would pick the five games we were most excited about in the upcoming year and whoever's five picks accumulated the highest aggregated set of review scores would win £20. Nice idea, right? Except the anticipated nail-biting tension and grumpy reviewer rebuttals failed to materialise when two of Bojeeva’s choices(APB and Brink) didn't get released, leaving him in an unrecoverable position-even if all three of his remaining picks had scored 100% he’d still have fallen short. It was all very unfair, but not so unfair that I’m going to give him his twenty quid back, that’s staying in my Fallout New Ve...er...new wardrobe fund.
Still, far be it from us to let a little teething trouble stifle a good idea. We’re doing it again, with another £20 on the line. Whereas my picks last year were all odds on favourites compared to Bojeeva’s chancier selections, this year I’ve gone for a few gambles alongside some surefire bankers.
Plenty of games vied for my attention, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to choose Little Big Planet 2 (cute songs and creative enablement just can’t overcome my distaste for platform games) or Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (promises of a drastic reinvention of the gameplay don’t fill me with confidence. I thought about including Half Life 2: Episode 3, but no matter how excited I am about exploring a wrecked ship in the arctic circle for clues to the Combine’s origins, I can’t quite believe that a vague ‘End of this year, maybe’ is going to turn into a release date that will be kept.
Amusingly, one of Bojeeva’s picks from last year that didn’t make it, Brink, nearly made the cut on my list for this year, as the sheer breadth of it’s persistent online team shootiness has me champing at the bit, but despite my love of Left 4 Dead and Borderlands leading me in the right direction, I still can’t quite bring myself to give a thumbs up to a game that’s so obviously going to stand or fall on it’s online multiplayer component above all else. I’m sure a few more excellent releases will bring me round, but right now I remain old fashioned enough to think a game’s single-player campaign should be its strongest selling point.
Finally, both The Last Story and Night of Sacrifice look like they might bring some much needed breadth and depth to the Wii in the form of an RPG with a solid creative pedigree and a survival horror with some inventive design choices, but having been burnt so many times before its so hard to be any more than cautiously optimistic about Wii games, and this top 5 is about unbridled excitement rather than cautious optimism. So, here are the games that have got me excited enough to..er...lose my bridle...?
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
This is the first of my chancy choices. Not that I have any misgivings about its likely quality mind you. After Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3, Bethesda has left me in no doubt that they could make an Elder Scrolls game, or any enormous free-roaming RPG, whilst drunk, half asleep and thinking about that girl from accounts and still have it turn out brilliantly. No, the gamble here is that with a release date of the 11th of November, there’s a good chance this one will slip into 2012. Still, just imagine what we’re in for if it doesn’t. A huge and varied landscape full of interesting things to do and discover. Atmospheric music that combines with epic vistas to give you a frisson of excitement, a sense of exploring another world. Oh, and lets not forget perfectly paced character growth and a staggering array of handy implements for when you’re feeling a bit stabby or smashy. It’ll be great, and I bet they won’t try to charge us for downloadable horse armour this time.
Portal 2
No surprise here. Portal is one of those rare games that can convert devout non-gamers into twitchy-thumbed addicts. The perfectly pitched humour, ingenious concept and gently escalating difficulty all hit their marks perfectly, combining to create an immensely satisfying game. Portal’s brevity is one of its strongest features-it never gets baggy, there are no re-used levels, no fetch quests, no filler or padding, nothing but a single minded drive for the finish line. While we find that admirable and deeply satisfying to play, it does mean that you’ll always be hungry for more. More in the case of Portal 2 means added gameplay mechanics in the form of tractor beams, lasers and paints that change the properties of the surfaces they’re applied to. Oh yes, there’s also the deliriously exciting prospect of two-player co-op. Portal is the sort of game where a smooth partnership will leave both players feeling like geniuses, whilst a headstrong or lopsided pairing will be comedically inept. Either way it will be hilarious.
Mass Effect 3
Another gamble, with a release date late enough in the year that a slip into 2012 is worryingly possible, but how can you possibly look forward to new games without including this? The plasticky environments, tedious inventory management and talkativeness of the first game was a let down, the varied environments, new missions and streamlined interface of Mass Effect 2 allowed the strengths of the series to shine through, and the third instalment? The Reapers are here, intergalactic genocide is in effect, and Commander Shepard is on the case! The first game may have been digital Mogadon, but Mass Effect 3’s got us up like basement brewed crank.
Fight Night Champion
Fight Night 4 was one of our most played games of 2009. The addition of size- and weight-based physics added even greater depth to a game that already offered a huge amount of versatility thanks to its diverse roster of fighters and its awareness of their different skills, strengths and weaknesses. For my money, it ranks both as one of the finest sports sims ever, and one of the finest beat-em-ups as well, with only the occasional imprecision to it's controls (jabs and crosses are spot on, but hooks occasionally register as straights) providing any grounds for grumbling.
Fight Night Champion promises greater precision in the punch controls, which fixes the only thing that stopped Fight Night 4 being my game of the year, then puts the icing on the cake by adding a single-player story. Not a single player campaign mind you-any career run through could be termed a campaign, but a story, with characters and plot.
Of course, you’ll still be able to just match up some licensed fighters if immediate action is your thing. The licensed fighter roster has all the big names of Fight Night 4 including Tommy Hearns, Muhammad Ali, the Sugars (Robinson, Leonard and Mosley) and dozens of others. There are also some new additions, but with the arguable exception of Fernando ‘El Feroz’ Vargas, most of them are fan favourite types like Vinny Pazienza, Eric Esch and Chris Arreola rather than the sort of Hall of Fame types that make up the bulk of the roster. Nevertheless, I can’t wait.
Batman Arkham City
Batman: Arkham Asylum was a genuine surprise: a licensed property that traded heavily on pleasing the fanboys with plenty of esoteric references, but didn’t forget to build a brilliant game around its nods to those in the know. Smoothly flowing combat, upgradeable skills and equipment and a stealth system that was useful without causing the game to grind to a skulking halt the way some stealth systems do.
While we do worry that the shift to an ‘Escape From New York’ style prison city in the sequel has the potential to replace the original’s compact but evocative environments with something larger but less distinctive, we still can’t help but be excited: the appearance of Hugo Strange, best known as the villain from a short but beloved run Batman comics from the 70s is presumably just the first of many nods to the fanboys. Best of all, the first game’s detective mode is going to be changed into an ‘augmented reality’ mode with the intention of sidestepping the first games only real pitfall, the annoying need to spend more time looking at fluorescent x-rays than at the gorgeous art.
Email This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook