Print
It's the end of the year, and you know what that means: awards! Awards for everyone, from everyone! Best graphics, best game featuring Nolan North as a ruggedly handsome scoundrel, worst “arrow in the knee” joke (answer: all of them), etc, etc, etc. Honestly, though, most of the teary eyed, speech-blabbing winners are kind of boring. For example, Portal 2: An undeniably great, but ultimately safe update to a revered franchise. Arkham City: An undeniably great, but ultimately safe update to a revered franchise. Skyrim: An undeniably great, but blah blah blah. You get the point. The following, then, are games didn't land with such a huge splash -- perhaps because they weren't so great, or maybe because they're not even new -- but will almost certainly send out ripples for years to come.
As a game, LA Noire did its best impression of the final scene from Titanic set to the tune of a thousand Rebecca Blacks. The difference between “doubt” and “lie” was often a total toss-up, and -- thanks to the game's straightforward structure -- you never really had a chance to learn how to avoid making the same mistake over and over again. It was, quite frankly, an exercise in spittle-soaked, hair-pulling frustration.
But it was also a ridiculously big-budget production that tried to shift its main means of engaging players away from shamelessly 'splodey gun-fu, close-quarters face-punchery, and ordering troops to carry out shamelessly 'splodey gun-fu and/or face-punchery. Instead, it asked us to slow down and think. Granted, that didn't always work out so well, but LA Noire bet the farm on being different. Moreover, the sleuthing sim made its incredible facial tech a key gameplay aspect. Interrogations were all about reading people -- or at least, they were supposed to be. Sure, plenty of mistakes were made, but other developers can learn from them.
LA Noire dared to give our brains a workout -- both thematically and mechanically -- while surrounded by games that leave only our trigger fingers achey and out of breath. And people ate it up. Nearly 4 million units sold don't lie. Gamers enjoy more than just long walks on the beach and short strolls down Generic Terrorist Alley. Sex, guns, and gore obviously sell. But so does intelligence.
Dragon Age II was -- by most accounts -- a dragon-sized disappointment. Its battles were as over-long and redundant as Sandal the dwarf's vocabulary. Its character progression was far too simple. Its repeat trips to the Free Marches' most luxurious lifeless caves paled in comparison to DA:O's sprawling field trip through Ferelden. Without a doubt, DAII suffered from a rushed development cycle. The resulting limitations, however, forced BioWare to craft an incredibly interesting game structure.
DAII's plot barely budged in terms of location, but that lack of an epic quest to save all mankind from a series of inconveniently located evils gave the city of Kirkwall a real identity. On top of that, your party members weren't simply lock-step drones that worshipped at your feet as you walked to the ends of the earth. They lived in the city too. They had lives and problems and jobs.
In a landscape littered with globe-trotting fantasy epics, DAII focused on the mundane. Call it an anti-epic, but there's value in that. The game prioritized character relationships and subtly brilliant (not to mention incredibly daring) themes like religion, sexuality, and terrorism over jaw-dropping sights and superficial sounds. Every other fantasy RPG will tell you that size matters -- possibly more than anything else. Dragon Age II might just make them reconsider.
Before you summon the full fury of the Internet to strike me down right where I stand, know that I'm not praising DNF for its quality. Hell, I'm not praising it at all. The game was a Frankenstein's monster made up of equal parts old-enough-to-be-fossilized game mechanics and despicable humor, sown together by a thick thread of overt sexism.
The resulting discussion surrounding it, however, showed just how far gaming's come since Duke's last testosterone-fueled trip through male power fantasyland. Critics and gamers alike dragged The King under a guillotine for rusty mechanics, archaic level design, and “jokes” that regularly crossed the line between edgy and hateful.
The game's profitability in spite of all that, however, shows just how far gaming still has to go.
Comments are closed on this article
Ridnarhtim
December 19, 2011 at 9:48am
Wasn't the issue with DNF that it introduced too many 'modern' mechanics? From playing the demo, the things that I didn't like about it were the 2 weapons limit, regenerating health and linear level design - all of these, as far as I can tell, have become the norm for shooters in the post-Halo/MW era.
Kinetic
December 20, 2011 at 2:21pm
+1 This, coupled with the fact that the game spent a good deal of time mocking other games for doing the same thing.
Listening to the satire in DNF was like watching a fat friend eat a whole chocolate cake, while mocking another fat guy for being fat.
Ghok
December 16, 2011 at 5:56pm
So true about LA Noire. I really like the game, but so much of the core gameplay is TERRIBLE. Yet what it got right is really good, and it is such a breath of fresh air.
unsunghero225
December 16, 2011 at 9:10am
good list..... I forgot about some of the games listed on here, like DA2.
RUSENSITIVESWEETNESS
December 16, 2011 at 5:27am
The only thing I know about Minecraft is that it has something to do with Legos.
I'd like to play Bulletstorm. I'll look into LoL. Ubisoft blows dead goats, nursing right next to EA.
t.y.wan
December 16, 2011 at 4:38am
Skyrim PC should be in the list... There are similar amounts of glitches in that game with any Fallout:NV or Fallout 3. You see BS "physics" everywhere, things that shouldn't be realistic to be present, things that are which is not implemented at all. The melee mechanics is goofy, the menu is god aweful, the graphics is not that amazing and most importantly, the gameplay, the linear dialogs and many many rubbish they just didn't bother to fix...
X2brute
December 16, 2011 at 10:52am
"Games That Matter More Than the Games of the Year" "Skyrim: An undeniably great, but blah blah blah. You get the point." Read the artice before you criticize it, or at least the title.
praetor_alpha
December 15, 2011 at 9:40pm
I tend to be weary of games that are represented by a common Internet acronym. All we need is World Troop Force (or similar), and we have a set!
bonafidewallst
December 15, 2011 at 6:13pm
I think Duke Nukem was important, though I disagree with the author's reasoning regarding the offensive nature of the content. Is it really any more offensive than Bulletstorm and Saints Row? I don't believe so.
The problem with Duke Nukem, the big sticking point, is that it epitmoizes everything terrible about modern FPS design. Everything you find wrong with games like Call of Duty, Sniper Ghost Warrior, Call of Juarez, Homefront and any others, are crystallized into an abhorrently clear example within Duke Nukem Forever. What really makes this a kick in the balls is that it's all within a game series that used to demonstrate everything right about old-school FPS design. Add a 14-year wait on top of all of this, and that to me shows why Duke Nukem is a shining example of what is wrong with both modern game design and marketing philosophies. Its content may be offensive to some, but what's most offensive to me is that this game passed a QA process somewhere along the line. Despicable.
Frencho
December 15, 2011 at 5:35pm
Dragon Age II is a flop, dont defend it! Period! If ppl start saying, but this scene was nice, but that minuscule part of gameplay got it right... Bioware wont make amends, the IP is really tainted now, Dragon age 3 has a lot to prove in comparison to superb sequels like the Witcher 2 and Skyrim.
bling581
December 16, 2011 at 10:37am
Sorry to disapoint, but even though I agree with many of the authors points I still have to admit it was a fun game. There were many new things they did get right. I know a lot of people didn't like the new combat system but I think it made things a bit more exciting then and real time. It was a bit too fast and in real life people can't jump across the screen, but it was more exciting then watching an Origins battle. I enjoyed the new character trees also. Stuff actually tied into each other and I liked being able to choose a ton of skills or focusing on a few and upping the special abilities.
Maktaka
December 16, 2011 at 1:12am
A flop how? It sold more than well enough to make a good profit. It injected some much needed uniqueness into a gameworld that previously had a great backstory propping up very vanilla combat and enemies. It had some of the best characters bioware has done to date. It smoothed out the difficulty curve of DA:O (which like Witcher 1 and 2 started hard and ended easy), although I didn't play until after the 1.03 rebalance patch. Crafting was far, FAR more enjoyable and sans all that in-and-out-of-camp pain in the ass that DA:O had.
It also suffered from a way-too-short development cycle, leaving the overall game notably shorter and head-deskingly repetitive with its dungeons.
The things DAII got right are what come from actually trying to make amends for the things that DA:O got wrong. They're the things that can't be corrected without having a team that has the humility to say "we spent months designing this system, and it didn't work, so we're completely scrapping it." The things it got wrong (content, content, and content) are the things that come from not having enough time and money, which is much easier to correct than getting the game mechanics wrong.
iceman08
December 15, 2011 at 4:37pm
I love SRTT for, as you said, "dumb fun." and the devs actually acknowledge they want to keep that going
