Posts tagged 2011

What makes a great game, you will probably get every different answer possible from every different gamer and judging from my list of games I’d give half of them myself. I guess this will go in no particular order but I’ll start with my favourite because it’s the first that springs to mind.

Portal 2 (PS3)

Portal 2 had a lot to live up to, the first Portal was just a little bonus on Valve’s Orange Box which stole the show with its dark sense of humour and mind bending physics puzzles, and when you stand out against Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, two games which are often considered as best in genre, you know you have a winner on your hands. So after a short but sweet first game, which seemed just the right length, not over staying its welcome and using a wide range of puzzles you would have been forgiven for wondering what else they could possibly do with Portal.

Portal 2 picks up many, many years later, your character has been in stasis and you’re awoken by Wheatley, an AI core who is responsible for looking after the test subjects. There has been a problem and he’s helping you to escape Aperture Science, and a wonderful introduction sequence which shows off the vastness of Aperture and the state which it has fallen in to since you destroyed GLaDOS in the first game, and shows despite its age the Source Engine can still manage to give us fantastic gaming environments.

From here you are thrust in to the puzzle solving and mad humour of the world of Portal all over again, but this time with a much deeper and fleshed out story, and plenty of new elements to keep you entertained and challenged for the duration. And once you’re done with the single player story there is a co-op multiplayer mode for you to enjoy with a friend, which isn’t just the usual single player with an extra person co-op, it is an entirely new game, and with the recent addition of a Downloadable add-on, free of charge, there’s hours more fun to be had. Wonderful game, well worth a purchase if you’ve not yet played and worth seeking out the original Portal too.

Bulletstorm (Xbox 360)

Now Bulletstorm is one of those stereotypical video games, full of shooting, gore, bad language and juvenile humour, but you know what? It’s bloody good fun. The story isn’t original, it isn’t clever, but it does what it does. A group of mercenaries on a mission of revenge, attack the ship of the person they’ve been pursuing and in the battle they both crash land on an alien planet and you have to fight your way across the ruins of this baddie infested world to find and kill him, so far so whatever right? Well the fun lies in the creativity of the kills, the stupidity of the dialogue, the crassness of the insults, you can just have a laugh playing this game. Yes, there are beautiful graphics and well designed areas, and all of that, but this isn’t a game where the story or the design matters that much, you’re just there to kick some arse and have a laugh doing it.

The multiplayer has more of the creativity and fun in the kills, get online with some friends and laugh as you gang bang a corpse in to a Venus fly-trap for extra points.

Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)

So how do you follow up Super Mario Galaxy, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 it seems, which improved on the original, so Super Mario 3D Land had a lot to live up after those 2 games. Did it manage it? No, of course it did, did you expect it to on a hand held with a tiny screen, even if it is in 3D? So despite having a difficult standard to live up to Super Mario 3D Land acquitted itself rather well. They were clever in designing this game, it doesn’t have the expansive worlds of the home console siblings but it does have levels which you can complete in a couple of minutes while on the bus, or in a waiting room, it does have cleverly designed platforming and good use of 3D. It manages to feel retro and modern at the same time, taking design elements of everything from the very first Super Mario games, with a lot owing to Super Mario Bros. 3 from the NES, and melds it with the elements that have been dominant in the series since Super Mario 64. I wouldn’t call it an entirely new experience but it does do what it does extremely well.

As a game play experience, after recent Nintendo 2D platformers, you may be left wondering where the hardcore element has gone. New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns both became so difficult it had many hardened gamers pulling their hair out, but fret not, Super Mario 3D Land may start off very easy, leaving you feeling bereft of challenge, but it soon gets back to the hair pulling difficulty. I used perhaps 50 lives between the start of the game and finishing world 8, after world 8 this has spiralled to almost 500, so give it a go and the challenge will appear.

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360)

Another game that had a lot to live up to. Batman: Arkham Asylum was widely seen as the best Superhero game ever made, so how Arkham City fare? Well it made everything bigger, we went from an enclosed Asylum to an open world city, it added more villains, more side quests, a bigger story and a second playable character in the form of Catwoman. After a brilliant start where you get to play as Bruce Wayne you dive straight in to being Batman fighting crime in the newly formed Arkham City which takes in mates from the former Arkham Asylum and the Blackwater Prison. You can stealth or fight your way through crowds of bad guys, come up against supervillains aplenty with some very well thought out fights, on in particular has you having to think your way through using all the weaknesses of the character to defeat him.

There’s also a lot of great voice talent on show here, creative character designs and a wonderfully realised city. Overall it’s very near the top of my list of games that must be played this year.

Dead Space 2 (PS3)

Dead Space 2 has probably my favourite start to a video game this year. You’re in a straitjacket, helpless and then you’re attacked by necromorphs, all you can do is run and run as these alien creatures try to kill you. Tense and scary, a wonderful start to a survival horror game. Dead Space vastly opens up the world of the game, from the tight claustrophobic spaces of the original the sequel has a whole world, though in reality you’re back in the tight spaces a lot, but there are more varied environments, great action set pieces and some great scares in this improved sequel. I have to admit I had my worries when they said they were going to focus more on the action than the first game but it really didn’t disappoint. With the bonus of Dead Space: Extraction on the PS3 version, and the add on which shows you what comes of the characters from that game it was a great experience and one I hope continues in style with a third game.

Right now that’s all that comes to mind as my top games, 5’s enough to be getting on with anyway. There are other games which were good but didn’t live up to their predecessors, Uncharted 3 for example, good game, but didn’t reach the heights of the second one. Gears of War 3, technically I would have to say it was a better game than either of the previous two, but despite that, despite actually having some character in its characters, despite looking better and being of a better technical standard it was repetitive and dull. Dead Island promised a lot with it’s cinematic introduction to the world, but when you get to the game itself, it’s badly put together, rather shoddily done, and for a game with a zombie horde that you can, supposedly, kill in very creative ways, it was boring as hell.

Any more I should have put on the list? Some that don’t belong?

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I thought it’s the time of year to reflect on the best of the year. So I’m going with some Best of posts if I can be bothered to keep writing them. And after the best TV episode of the year last night I thought it was a good time to do TV. And this is going to be British shows, so despite loving shows like Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Glee, Supernatural, etc. I’m not going to put any of them in there.

Drama

Luther

Luther had a decent start last year but really picked up the quality this year, the second series was great stuff. The show itself seemed like it might not come back with a fairly lackluster audience for the first series but when they picked it up for 2 specials it seemed like a gamble, then they expanded it to a 4 episode series and they were really on to a winner.

Following on from the first series with Luther in a strange friendly relationship with the killer he’d spent much of the first series trying to catch. Then the story expanded with him taking in a young woman and trying to rescue her from life of drugs and sex for money. With Luther’s trademark insight in to the darkness he pursues and sometimes crossing the line in order to get the job done, it’s not as clichéd as it sounds, OK it is, but it works.

Downton Abbey

Unexpected for me, I watched the first episode last series and didn’t really get in to it, but on the recommendation of a friend I picked up the Blu-ray set of both series and really enjoyed it. It’s a show full of bitches, male and female, toffs and servants alike, barely a likeable character amongst them, but at the same time the interactions are a lot of fun, the storylines span months, even years, from the sinking of the Titanic through to the end of World War 1 and the Spanish Flu outbreak, playing out against the loss of tradition and the very real possibility of the loss of the title and land for the toffs, and the associated jobs for the servants.

There are characters I actually hate in this show. Which shows how good it is because it takes something to get me invested enough to not be indifferent to the characters.

The Fades

Now this was a new series that started on BBC Three. The premise, a teenage boy has disturbing nightmares about the end of the world, then he begins seeing dead people, the Fades of the title. He discovers that he is part of a group of people called The Angelics who have the power to see dead people and various other powers, including the ability heal injuries, and it is their job to fight the menace of these “fades”.

While there was a few problems with the show, things that weren’t fully thought out or fleshed out, for the most part it was really well done. Lots of geeky references and full of interesting ideas, even if they were really the most well played in the show. It’ll be really interesting to see, if this is picked up, where it goes in the future.

This Is England ‘88

Now to the show that made me think to do this. This is England, a brilliant film, This is England ‘86 a fantastic continuation, This is England ‘88 kept up the tradition and really was some of the best TV in years. It’s a hard premise to sell, I mean it’s basically just a bunch of young northerners living their lives in the 80s, the ups and (mostly) the downs.

There’s utterly fantastic acting, the writing is so real. Tears, laughs, depression, love, life, all run through This is England in spades. Woody, Lol, Shaun, Trev, Gadge, Milky, Kelly and Smell, a wonderful cast of characters who you believe have a life that goes on when you’re not looking at the screen.

Be prepared for hard to watch scenes, heartache, inappropriate laughs and floods of tears while watching, so not for the easily depressed, but really wonderful TV that deserves much recognition and to continue for as long as they can make such brilliant stories.

Misfits

Now in to it’s third series Misfits has continued to be funny, irreverent and filthy despite losing, arguably, it’s biggest asset. The series managed to introduce a new character, a whole new set of powers and get them back in to community service with flair and keep it entertaining at the same time. With the introduction of new powers and Rudy they’ve managed to keep it fresh and the fucked up situations the ASBO 5 keep managing to get in makes it not only funny but one of my favourite shows on the air. Here’s looking forward to the end of this series and the upcoming series 4.

Honourable mention

Outcasts

Now I know this wasn’t to the taste of a lot of people, it was slow, nothing happened, it was a mess, are just some of the criticisms levelled against it, but you know what? I’d argue it wasn’t as slow as people think, it is true it was a bit of a mess, things didn’t quite work as well as they should have and it could have been made to work better. But it should have been given a bigger chance.

The story was of a colony of humans on a habitable planet many light-years from Earth where they were trying to make a fresh start of it after ecological and social disaster on Earth. The people of this new planet are trying to make a fairer more eco-friendly place but the usual corruption is sinking in and with the last transport from Earth coming in outside influence is trying to twist the people against the people in charge.

The show really did improve in it’s 8 episode run and really did have a lot of potential there, if only it had been allowed a chance to grow in to itself.

Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker has a twisted sense of the world and an interest in the geeky, so when he decided to do a sort of Sci-Fi anthology of techological what-if stories I have to say I was very interested. So far the first 2 have been on and I’ve really enjoyed them. The first a story of a Princess being abducted before her wedding and the demands being posted on Youtube so everyone knows about it and the government can’t hide it or spin it the way they want it. All they can do is react. Wonderfully twisted, could have done with a bit more flesh on its bones.

The second a “sarcastic future” in Brooker’s own words. Every surface is an interactive video screen, people power the world by cycling for merits and spend those merits on everything from buying clothes for their virtual avatar and their processed food, to a pentalty for not watching the adverts which flash up on their screens at random. And for a chance to get away from this you have to buy your way in to being on a “X-Factor/Britain’s Got Talent” type show.

I hope there’s a future in this show because it reminds me of shows like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits but with a British, slightly absurd twist on the format.

Comedy

Spy

Sky upped their original content quota this year and one of the things to come out of it was Spy. With the guy from Dirk Gently, her from No Heroics, Citizen Smith himself and him from Horrible Histories it was surprisingly good. It was kind of a British version of Chuck without any super computer in the head and an annoying little shit of a kid. Well worth checking out.

Psychoville

Well the second series of Psychoville picked up where the first left off. As wacky and dark as ever it managed to kill off most of the cast and replace them with equally strange characters. Funny, twisted, dark and original Psychoville deserved to continue but unfortunately this was the last series, at least it went out while still good and I hope the guys continue on to new projects that I like as much as this.

Rev.

On the second series now, Rev. is the story of Reverend Adam Smallbone, moved from a small village parish to an inner city London parish. With a small but loyal congregation with a CofE school in his parish he has to liaise with the headmistress, who he seemingly fancies, interact with the inner city kids who are likely to tell him to fuck off and an ambitious lay reader who wants to become a vicar himself. It follows his crises of faith, his conflicting love for his wife and doing his job and the ridiculous situations he gets in with the local junkie asking for money and the drunk regularly leaving his porn around the church. It may not sound laugh a minute but it’s good stuff.

Mongrels

This BBC Three comedy is in its second year, a puppet show with a cast of various animals, Dogs, Cats, Pigeons, Foxes, all talking, singing and dancing of course. With shades of Family Guy in its knowing nods towards popular culture and slightly surreal humour at times. With songs like “I’m going to murder Justin Bieber”, “F**king Chickens” and “I’m a C**t” it’s not for everyone but I get plenty of laughs out of it.

Best of the rest

So there’s other stuff like Him & Her, Educating Essex, Living with the Amish, Frozen Planet, Everything & Nothing, Wonders of the Universe, Russell Howard’s Good News, Beaver Falls but this post is getting a bit long now and I want to wrap it up. So overall I think this has been a good year for TV and I’m sure there are other shows I loved that I’m missing but that’s the shows that came to mind.

Any recommendations of shows I missed?