T w e n t y S i d e d

Like this post, Portal 2 was just too dang short. The puzzles were probably too easy. People claim the multiplayer aspect fixes this. I don’t know. By the time I was ready for multiplayer, my friends had finished it already. There didn’t seem to be much point in running through these and having them watch me solve old puzzles, so I still haven’t played with anyone else. Let us set team play aside and focus on the single player experience.

This was a perfect game. From beginning to end, this game was a delight. I laughed at the jokes. I was charmed by the characters. I was surprised by the plot twist[s], and I reveled in the atmosphere. There was never a moment where I stopped having fun, or was annoyed by the game, or a joke fell flat, or the experience was ruined by some bug. Like I said: Perfect.

Portal 2 was cheaper than Skyrim, but both were priced as AAA games. Yet in the time I’ve spent getting to know Skyrim, I could have run through Portal 2 about 30 times. Which is better: The perfect snack, or a six-course dinner where the bread was stale, the waiter dumped your drink in your lap, and you find a chicken bone in the soup? I don’t know. I guess it depends on how hungry you are.

After the credits rolled, I was ready to give Portal 2 my Game of the Year. Now I don’t think I could give that honor to any single game. The trade-off between quantity and quality is a perilous one, and there is a right answer. As a consumer, I obviously always want my games to have both excellence and playtime. I want both, always, as much as possible. The only hard rule I have is that a game really ought to have one or the other.

Having said that: We could do with a few more perfect games.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

How is anyone supposed to rate or even discuss this game objectively? It’s a sequel to a beloved and revered classic. (Whether or not the original deserves to be revered is a thorny discussion we can leave for another time.) This game is unlike the original in terms of gameplay and style, yet it preserves the original premise, tone, and continuity. (Or reverse-continutiy. Or whatever you call it when you make a prequel.) It’s not nearly as freeform as the original, yet it’s far more freeform than its current-day contemporaries. It’s smaller than the original, yet larger than most shooters. It has a slick, appealing aesthetic, yet that aesthetic doesn’t match the one in the original game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2011: Deus Ex: Human Revolution”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I sort of gave Minecraft my unofficial Game of The Year last year. Most people avoided doing that because the game wasn’t “done” yet.

The endpoint of Minecraft development is a somewhat nebulous thing. A year ago the game offered a fully playable experience that dwarfed the playtime of most big-budget games. It was fun, diverse, and stable, even though it was in beta. Now it’s released, but more updates are planned. So it seems like this “final” build is arbitrarily so. Either the game was done ages ago or it’s not done yet.

But whatever. I guess it’s done whenever the developer says it is. Since it was offically released this year, I thought I’d talk about this not-final build of the game and the new features it added. I was actually very disappointed in it. Throughout development I felt like each new version was a nice improvement, but Minecraft 1.0 added a bunch of things I dislike to the game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2011: Minecraft”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

In the next few posts, I’m going to have a look back over 2011 and talk about a few games I liked. Think of this as an alternative to “Game of the Year”. I’m doing this because I don’t want to try to justify lifting one game over the others, which feels too much like assigning review scores.

But first, I want to talk about a few games that I missed, overlooked, failed to review, forgot about, or neglected.

Arkham City, Serious Sam 3, Saint’s Row the Third, and Rage

Wanted to play all of these. Got Skyrim instead.

Next time, why don’t you idiots try releasing your games during the season of not Christmas? I have less money for buying videogames at the end of the year, and I have much less time for playing them.

Okay, some of these were more “Halloween” than “Christmas”, but still. We need more summer games and less of a pile-up at the end of the year.

I’m sure I’ll pick these games up on some bargain sale next summer.

Frayed Knights

I’ve been looking forward to Jay Barnson’s Frayed Knights for a long time. Then I got a copy. Then I got Skyrim.

In the few hours I spent with the game I found it to be charming and wonderfully old-school. But Skyrim consumed my gaming hours, and so I haven’t played enough Frayed Knights to do it justice in a review. Maybe once the holidays are over we can go back and give this thing the attention it deserves.

Sorry Frayed Knights. You’re fun, but you’re not Skyrim.

Space Pirates and Zombies

Full disclosure: In my daydream fantasy world future, I design a space-adventure that harkens back to the old Starflight games. I’ve been working on this design in my head for years.

Spaz is too much like my dream game for me to see it as anything else, and too different for me to accept it as a substitute. Rather than write some crazy review where I savaged the game for not being exactly what I wanted to build, I decided to keep my mouth shut about it.

I will say I really disliked the leveling. Your most important upgrades were tied to story missions, which was something I really, desperately hated about Freelancer.

You might actually like this game if you’re not obsessed with an unrealistic dream project like I am. I don’t know. I can’t judge objectively.

Bastion

I’d seen ads for this game, but I didn’t know anything about it. It came out this summer, but I never heard anything about it good or bad. Then a week ago a friend bought me a copy, and the next day people were talking about how it was their GOTY. So I have this to look forward to at some point.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.