Ah, its that time of the year. The time when Steam takes EVERYTHING from my wallet,  the time where it is now the norm for me to be working on uni stuff all the way through my time at home and the time where everyone writes top 10 lists. Well, 2011 has been a great year. So rather than limit my choices to ten, I may as well give you a list of all the games I’ve really enjoyed this year and just why you should give them your time. Before I start, I need to say I have missed out a couple of key releases that probably should end up on this list. At the time of writing I haven’t played Bulletstorm, Dead Space 2, Gears of War 3, Halo Anniversary or the Witcher 2 so they will sadly be absent from this list So, on with the list! Magicka So lets start in January with the release of Magicka. Buggered to hell at launch, its quirky humour, combined with developers almost as mental (they made a Vietnam expansion for it) and super powerful spell system made it a great game to play in co-op with a group of friends. Just make sure you don’t have any deep seated resentment of them – the existence of friendly fire will lead to arguments faster than you can say “Rainstorm + Lightning” Overall, the game is pretty good but it is vital its played in co-op – it can be a little unfair sometimes to a lone player. Stacking The second of the downloadable games Double Fine made during the Brutal Legend development hell, Stacking is smart, funny and well crafted puzzle game as you might expect from Tim Schaffer’s studio. The multiple ways of solving each puzzle makes it a little bit more involving than other games of the type and the humour is witty rather than outright laugh out loud. Dawn of War 2 – Retribution Next we have the latest Dawn of War game. Carrying on the gameplay of the other Dawn of War 2 games, the small scale RPG is now expanded with some army building. Don’t want a useless hero in your party? Swap them out for a honour guard unit! Most important though is the addition of the Imperial Guard to both single-player and multi-player. As a fan of the underdog and anything that's human in sci-fi, the Guard are just the best from the extravagant moustache of the colonel to the Rambos of the Catachan Devils to the huge Banebalde. Retribution is now, after a few months, my favourite of the Dawn of War 2 games. Total War: Shogun 2 March brought the release of the next game in the Total War series. As befitting its epic scale, it weighs in at about 20gb at launch and was packed full of content. The return to Medieval style warfare makes the combat very different to Empire and Napoleon, instead requiring you to be a bit more active than just lining your guys and waiting. On the campaign map, the change to a single nation makes it simultaneously feel more comfortable and more epic. It leads to many more cases of the stories and tales these games generate. Personally, I don’t like Shogun 2 as much as Empire. It primarily because with Empire, I know the period of history it is taking place in, so I know how it all works. However, as a learning tool, Shogun 2 is still a fantastic game. I’m looking forward to what CA do next. Portal 2 Hey guess what? I like this game. LIKE EVERY OTHER INTERNET COMMENTER. BECAUSE ITS GOOD. I CAN’T EXPRESS HOW GOOD THIS GAME IS. BECAUSE ITS SO FANTASTIC. The only issue is that it makes me feel like an idiot when I get stuck. But that’s nothing compared to the elation you get when you solve a puzzle. Brink In contrast, next to no one likes this game. Which is a real shame as it has some very good ideas and is constantly being improved on by the development team. It was a disappointment but it is still worth playing. All weapons useable by all classes, the changes to medics, the customisation of both guns and people are just so good. Find some friends, find it for cheap and jump in. L.A. Noire If you don’t want to grab some friends, sit down and play through L.A. Noire. The great detective story may start to fall apart if you mess it around too much but it is a great single player experience. The story is a gritty noire style tale, taking Cole Phelps through the 4 desks at the LAPD. Each desk has an over arching plot (especially the murder desk) but the overall tale shows the downfall of Cole as he stumbles upon a conspiracy and discovers just how corrupt LA is. In terms of the game, it can be very simplistic. But the setting, the style and way it carries it self (look at that facial animation. LOOK AT IT!) is just great. Frozen Synapse As PC Gamer put it, it’s turn based Counter-Strike. I’ve been on board since the beta testing. Simultaneous turns lead to an unusual style of play. But the thing I love the most is the fact I can play a long game over several hours – playing a turn, walking away to do some work before coming back to watch out how each of our plans worked. It is normally catastrophic but watching a completed game play out is sublime Bastion Greg Kasavin is part of a group of games journalist who worked at Gamespot that really got me interested in games (the others include people like Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro, Rich Gallup, Jason Ocampo and Carry Gouskos). I’ve kept track of him and was very intrigued by the dribs and drabs of information that leaked out about Bastion. When it was shown and it was released, I loved it. The beautiful hand drawn art style, the haunting music and the dynamic narrator all work together. Look too closely at one thing and you miss that the whole package works together like a machine. Deus Ex: Human Revolution “I didn’t ask for this” I was never a huge fan of Deus Ex. I saw it’s great idea’s but I’ve never seen Hong Kong. However, I could not put down Human Revolution. It is a beautiful game in terms of its design (both game and art) that presents such a great look for the future. In terms of gameplay, it a smart combination of the freedom you were given in the original and a modern shooter like Rainbow Six Vegas. It is a great game to sit down and embrace the story. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Warhammer 40,000 is in fact one of the best fictions to set games in. The universe is so large that you can have a huge galaxy changing event in a game that doesn’t affect the tabletop, the different races are varied enough to fit the story and its so outlandish it sits comfortable in your brain making it fun. Space Marine is Relic doing something different. Rather than an RTS, it gets you down and up close to the bad guys. It makes the player feel like a Space Marine as you chop, chew, charge and explode your way through Orks and other nasty things in the universe (hint – it’s Chaos again). Add in a multiplayer mode with co-op and customisation and you have a perfect package for Warhammer 40,000 fans. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad   I will punch a man who calls Battlefield realistic. If you want realism, Red Orchestra 2 is the place to go. With fancy Unreal Engine graphics and physics, Red Orchestra is a great bit of fun. It can change from immensely satisfying to horrifically unfair in a single map. And when it works it is great fun. Its such a shame it was broken at launch and still has a few issues with the server browser. Now excuse me, I’m just delighting in the sniper scopes. Batman: Arkham City   It is more Arkham Asylum! More of the same combat system that allows button mashing but makes you feel better when you do it properly. More of Batman being Batman. More of his foes being dastardly (at last! A Penguin who isn’t silly). It’s packed full of stuff to do, from the main story to all the Riddler challenges to a huge selection of side quests. Arkham City is a ruggedly beautiful place – on my PC there have been points where I have just sat down and watched the world go by – from the thugs patrolling to looking off to the distance. I’m looking forward to playing some more. Payday: The Heist So those steam sales are pretty worth it. Picked this up only a few days ago and love it. It feels like a janky Left 4 Heist but with some cool touches that just make it. Constant progression keeps bringing you back while the maps are cleverly thought out. It carefully balances on the edge between being broken in its difficulty and being fun – its just right, even in single player. I also get the feeling the developers are in the for the long run with plenty of patches and activity from them. It is well worth the buy. Battlefield 3   Battlefield 3 is the true heir to the Battlefield name from Battlefield 2. It brings staples like jets and lying prone crashing into the world made in Bad Company 2, taking the destructibility and unlock systems. Add in the fantastic new engine and you have my game of the year. I love the multiplayer – always tempting me forward with more and more unlocks to get. The singleplayer is relatively forgettable although two levels really stand, one of which feels like the design team of Mirror’s Edge was picked up and told to make a super slick, super fun scene from a Michael Mann movie. Modern Warfare 3   It’s the end of an saga stretching from the glory days of Infinity Ward down to change of Call of Duty into a household name and the basic destruction of IW. It ends the story of Price, Soap and Makarov properly, wrapping it up in a mad game that never stops for a moment. Unlike the quiet moments of the last two games, there is no slow down. Its a constant noise that makes some truely amazing sequences. The rest of the package is usual but I did enjoy the Survival mode if its you’re sort of thing. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Few games quite reach the same level where everyone (including normally non-gamers) you know is playing them on launch week. But when Skyrim came out, everyone in my student flat (all 7 of us), most of my Steam and Xbox Live friends and most of the people I knew in real life were all chatting out hunting dragons, exploring Skyrim and being sent to the moon by giants. It is everything I loved about Oblivion with most of the last game’s flaws Saint’s Row: The Third It is hard to imagine that the first Saint’s Row was a simple rip-off of GTA, especially once you’ve played the latest game. While other games may wait a while before giving you predator missiles and helicopters, within a few missions you’re handling just that. Its a game where ripping off the National Guard of a few rocket launchers is standard, fighting a gang of Luchadores is common place and hacking into a Tron-esque world is taken all in its stride. I say this quite a lot but this game does not give a s***. Iron Brigade (Trenched) Sadly delayed since its actual release in the summer due to a Portuguese copyright claim, Iron Brigade finally came out. It missed out on the fan fare that normally accompanies the release of a Double Fine game due to its fractured release which is a massive shame. Iron Brigade is a great combination of 3rd person shooter and tower defence which pits you in a mech against waves of TV inspired monsters. I love the World War 1 aesthetic and the ‘30’s man’s magazine style of the game. I love it and if you want to play some co-op pick up. After all, there is that bear on Mars we have to hunt down. So those are the games of 2011, I hope they have interested you and give you some ideas about what to play next year. But that's all from me so have a Happy New Year!

Ah, its that time of the year. The time when Steam takes EVERYTHING from my wallet,  the time where it is now the norm for me to be working on uni stuff all the way through my time at home and the time where everyone writes top 10 lists.

Well, 2011 has been a great year. So rather than limit my choices to ten, I may as well give you a list of all the games I’ve really enjoyed this year and just why you should give them your time. Before I start, I need to say I have missed out a couple of key releases that probably should end up on this list. At the time of writing I haven’t played Bulletstorm, Dead Space 2, Gears of War 3, Halo Anniversary or the Witcher 2 so they will sadly be absent from this list

So, on with the list!

Magicka

So lets start in January with the release of Magicka. Buggered to hell at launch, its quirky humour, combined with developers almost as mental (they made a Vietnam expansion for it) and super powerful spell system made it a great game to play in co-op with a group of friends. Just make sure you don’t have any deep seated resentment of them – the existence of friendly fire will lead to arguments faster than you can say “Rainstorm + Lightning”

Overall, the game is pretty good but it is vital its played in co-op – it can be a little unfair sometimes to a lone player.

Stacking

The second of the downloadable games Double Fine made during the Brutal Legend development hell, Stacking is smart, funny and well crafted puzzle game as you might expect from Tim Schaffer’s studio. The multiple ways of solving each puzzle makes it a little bit more involving than other games of the type and the humour is witty rather than outright laugh out loud.

Dawn of War 2 – Retribution

Next we have the latest Dawn of War game. Carrying on the gameplay of the other Dawn of War 2 games, the small scale RPG is now expanded with some army building. Don’t want a useless hero in your party? Swap them out for a honour guard unit!

Most important though is the addition of the Imperial Guard to both single-player and multi-player. As a fan of the underdog and anything that’s human in sci-fi, the Guard are just the best from the extravagant moustache of the colonel to the Rambos of the Catachan Devils to the huge Banebalde.

Retribution is now, after a few months, my favourite of the Dawn of War 2 games.

Total War: Shogun 2

March brought the release of the next game in the Total War series. As befitting its epic scale, it weighs in at about 20gb at launch and was packed full of content. The return to Medieval style warfare makes the combat very different to Empire and Napoleon, instead requiring you to be a bit more active than just lining your guys and waiting. On the campaign map, the change to a single nation makes it simultaneously feel more comfortable and more epic. It leads to many more cases of the stories and tales these games generate.

Personally, I don’t like Shogun 2 as much as Empire. It primarily because with Empire, I know the period of history it is taking place in, so I know how it all works. However, as a learning tool, Shogun 2 is still a fantastic game. I’m looking forward to what CA do next.

Portal 2

Hey guess what? I like this game. LIKE EVERY OTHER INTERNET COMMENTER. BECAUSE ITS GOOD. I CAN’T EXPRESS HOW GOOD THIS GAME IS. BECAUSE ITS SO FANTASTIC.

The only issue is that it makes me feel like an idiot when I get stuck. But that’s nothing compared to the elation you get when you solve a puzzle.

Brink

In contrast, next to no one likes this game. Which is a real shame as it has some very good ideas and is constantly being improved on by the development team. It was a disappointment but it is still worth playing. All weapons useable by all classes, the changes to medics, the customisation of both guns and people are just so good. Find some friends, find it for cheap and jump in.

L.A. Noire

If you don’t want to grab some friends, sit down and play through L.A. Noire. The great detective story may start to fall apart if you mess it around too much but it is a great single player experience.

The story is a gritty noire style tale, taking Cole Phelps through the 4 desks at the LAPD. Each desk has an over arching plot (especially the murder desk) but the overall tale shows the downfall of Cole as he stumbles upon a conspiracy and discovers just how corrupt LA is.

In terms of the game, it can be very simplistic. But the setting, the style and way it carries it self (look at that facial animation. LOOK AT IT!) is just great.

Frozen Synapse

As PC Gamer put it, it’s turn based Counter-Strike. I’ve been on board since the beta testing. Simultaneous turns lead to an unusual style of play. But the thing I love the most is the fact I can play a long game over several hours – playing a turn, walking away to do some work before coming back to watch out how each of our plans worked. It is normally catastrophic but watching a completed game play out is sublime

Bastion

Greg Kasavin is part of a group of games journalist who worked at Gamespot that really got me interested in games (the others include people like Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro, Rich Gallup, Jason Ocampo and Carry Gouskos). I’ve kept track of him and was very intrigued by the dribs and drabs of information that leaked out about Bastion.

When it was shown and it was released, I loved it. The beautiful hand drawn art style, the haunting music and the dynamic narrator all work together. Look too closely at one thing and you miss that the whole package works together like a machine.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

“I didn’t ask for this”

I was never a huge fan of Deus Ex. I saw it’s great idea’s but I’ve never seen Hong Kong. However, I could not put down Human Revolution. It is a beautiful game in terms of its design (both game and art) that presents such a great look for the future. In terms of gameplay, it a smart combination of the freedom you were given in the original and a modern shooter like Rainbow Six Vegas. It is a great game to sit down and embrace the story.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Warhammer 40,000 is in fact one of the best fictions to set games in. The universe is so large that you can have a huge galaxy changing event in a game that doesn’t affect the tabletop, the different races are varied enough to fit the story and its so outlandish it sits comfortable in your brain making it fun.

Space Marine is Relic doing something different. Rather than an RTS, it gets you down and up close to the bad guys. It makes the player feel like a Space Marine as you chop, chew, charge and explode your way through Orks and other nasty things in the universe (hint – it’s Chaos again). Add in a multiplayer mode with co-op and customisation and you have a perfect package for Warhammer 40,000 fans.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

 

I will punch a man who calls Battlefield realistic. If you want realism, Red Orchestra 2 is the place to go. With fancy Unreal Engine graphics and physics, Red Orchestra is a great bit of fun. It can change from immensely satisfying to horrifically unfair in a single map. And when it works it is great fun.

Its such a shame it was broken at launch and still has a few issues with the server browser. Now excuse me, I’m just delighting in the sniper scopes.

Batman: Arkham City

 

It is more Arkham Asylum! More of the same combat system that allows button mashing but makes you feel better when you do it properly. More of Batman being Batman. More of his foes being dastardly (at last! A Penguin who isn’t silly). It’s packed full of stuff to do, from the main story to all the Riddler challenges to a huge selection of side quests.

Arkham City is a ruggedly beautiful place – on my PC there have been points where I have just sat down and watched the world go by – from the thugs patrolling to looking off to the distance. I’m looking forward to playing some more.

Payday: The Heist

So those steam sales are pretty worth it. Picked this up only a few days ago and love it. It feels like a janky Left 4 Heist but with some cool touches that just make it. Constant progression keeps bringing you back while the maps are cleverly thought out. It carefully balances on the edge between being broken in its difficulty and being fun – its just right, even in single player. I also get the feeling the developers are in the for the long run with plenty of patches and activity from them. It is well worth the buy.

Battlefield 3

 

Battlefield 3 is the true heir to the Battlefield name from Battlefield 2. It brings staples like jets and lying prone crashing into the world made in Bad Company 2, taking the destructibility and unlock systems. Add in the fantastic new engine and you have my game of the year. I love the multiplayer – always tempting me forward with more and more unlocks to get. The singleplayer is relatively forgettable although two levels really stand, one of which feels like the design team of Mirror’s Edge was picked up and told to make a super slick, super fun scene from a Michael Mann movie.

Modern Warfare 3

 

It’s the end of an saga stretching from the glory days of Infinity Ward down to change of Call of Duty into a household name and the basic destruction of IW. It ends the story of Price, Soap and Makarov properly, wrapping it up in a mad game that never stops for a moment. Unlike the quiet moments of the last two games, there is no slow down. Its a constant noise that makes some truely amazing sequences. The rest of the package is usual but I did enjoy the Survival mode if its you’re sort of thing.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Few games quite reach the same level where everyone (including normally non-gamers) you know is playing them on launch week. But when Skyrim came out, everyone in my student flat (all 7 of us), most of my Steam and Xbox Live friends and most of the people I knew in real life were all chatting out hunting dragons, exploring Skyrim and being sent to the moon by giants. It is everything I loved about Oblivion with most of the last game’s flaws

Saint’s Row: The Third

It is hard to imagine that the first Saint’s Row was a simple rip-off of GTA, especially once you’ve played the latest game. While other games may wait a while before giving you predator missiles and helicopters, within a few missions you’re handling just that. Its a game where ripping off the National Guard of a few rocket launchers is standard, fighting a gang of Luchadores is common place and hacking into a Tron-esque world is taken all in its stride. I say this quite a lot but this game does not give a s***.

Iron Brigade (Trenched)

Sadly delayed since its actual release in the summer due to a Portuguese copyright claim, Iron Brigade finally came out. It missed out on the fan fare that normally accompanies the release of a Double Fine game due to its fractured release which is a massive shame. Iron Brigade is a great combination of 3rd person shooter and tower defence which pits you in a mech against waves of TV inspired monsters. I love the World War 1 aesthetic and the ‘30’s man’s magazine style of the game. I love it and if you want to play some co-op pick up. After all, there is that bear on Mars we have to hunt down.

---

So those are the games of 2011, I hope they have interested you and give you some ideas about what to play next year. But that’s all from me so have a Happy New Year!