A few weeks ago David Cage, head of game developer Quantic Dream and creative lead on fascinating-if-flawed games Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) and Heavy Rain, gave a talk at the DICE summit in Vegas in which he lamented the games industry’s “Peter Pan syndrome” and unwillingness to mature as an art form/entertainment medium. Gamasutra have a decent account of it here. The inimitable Rock, Paper, Shotgun have already written a decent counterpoint here, with John “Quoted on the BBC” Walker neatly pointing out the flaws and oversights of Cage’s argument.

However, Walker wrote his post before this Sunday’s Oscars 2013 show. The annual Academy Awards is the event at which Hollywood trots out its most beautiful to show off just how awesome and cool and Important (with a big I) and talented it is, demonstrating that it’s the premier arts/entertainment medium. Better than books (movie adaptations of books are revered, novelisations are dismissed. It’s a one-way thing), better than comics, better than radio, better than TV, and certainly better than video games.

Cage and others frequently complain that the games industry is like the movie industry in its very earliest days, all vaudeville and bombast without the subtlety and nuance that cinema discovered during the 20th century. As gamers, we agonise over the rubbish, insulting and derivative representation of women both as characters in games and within the industry itself. We cringe at the ‘booth babes’ that line up at game industry events, flaunting flesh to supposedly tempt stereotypically horny, male, sweaty nerds towards the latest man-shooter.

The 2013 Oscars began like this:

I’m not especially outraged. There’s already rumour that all the named actresses were in on the joke. If this had been part of Saturday Night Live or an episode of Family Guy, it might have been slightly amusing. Perhaps it even was slightly amusing, even in context. Perhaps it was sexist, perhaps it was satirical. I’m not sure, and I don’t particularly care.

The main thing I take away is that the main event of the movie calendar, the big showcase night where the industry highlights to the entire world exactly what it is, where Hollywood declares its cinematic importance and sophistication, began with a song about boobs.

I’d be pretty embarrassed to work in an industry that chooses to represent itself like that, particularly while there are genuine ongoing issues such as the imploding VFX industry being protested right outside and silenced on stage.

Mostly, though, I’m observing that games are actively trying to deal with issues of sexism, feminism and emotional maturity, engaging in those difficult conversations with the ultimate goal of getting better, while movies are racing in the exact opposite direction.

David Cage never did have a particularly good point. But the next time he insists that “the time has come for a meaningful constructive, balanced new partnership [between the gaming industry and Hollywood]“, I’ll think of the boob song.

I think games are doing just fine without Hollywood, thanks, David.

Reposted from simonkjones.com.

Back at the start of the year I remember a conversation which noted how good 2011 had been for games, while 2012 looked like it was going to be a quieter, less interesting year. Turns out that was an entirely incorrect prediction, as this has been one of the most exciting 12 months for gaming in quite some time. Without any further faffing, here are my top games of the year…

Dishonoured

After somehow sensing that this was going to be something special fairly early in its development, I went into a media lockdown, avoiding the vast slew of trailers and gameplay videos that progressively robbed the game of its wonder and mystery prior to release. As such, every part of the game was a joyous reveal as I played it, from the absolutely spot-on stealth mechanics to the super fast, viscerally satisfying combat. Dishonoured is a game about planning: much of it is spent lurking on ledges and rooftops, formulating a plan of either infiltration or attack. Then there are the frantic moments when everything is about to go wrong and there’s half a second to hide before being spotted by guards.

The slick, exceedingly fun stealth/exploration/combat trio is built upon a distinctive and fresh world. The city of Dunwall lives and breathes around you and, while Dishonoured is a game with a linear narrative, it feels more alive and convincing than any open world game I’ve played. It has verisimilitude seeping from every plague-ridden pore, from the architecture to the characters. It was referred to by many reviewers as a steampunk setting but it is closer to a kind of electropunk; Victoriana merged with high technology. It’s an alternate reality fantasy game that feels more ‘real’ than anything else I’ve played this year.

Dishonoured’s story has been criticised for not being about anything in particular, lacking any central theme or grand message. It’s a criticism that surprised me, as I found the story to be very overtly about the corrupting influence of power – hardly a new theme and it doesn’t exactly cover new ground, but the intent is definitely present. The game goes to great lengths to explain the motivations of its villains, characters which initially appear as cartoonish caricatures but which are gradually revealed to be flawed beings often doing what they thought was best in impossible situations. All characters have doubts about their actions and motivations, revealed either through writings or the ingenious ‘heart’ power. The key question the game poses, then, is whether the player will become similarly corrupted.

Journey

(Edit: I omitted Journey from this article originally, having forgotten that it was a 2012 game. For shame.)

Journey more-or-less single handedly made my PS3 a worthy investment this year (well, along with its blu-ray capabilities, I suppose). Playstation 3 is an almost entirely derelict games platform for me, offering very little of any interest. It looked promising at first, with the likes of Heavy Rain, the early Uncharteds, Brutal Legend, plus of course the precursor to Journey, Flower. But in the following years nothing has caught my attention that hasn’t also been available on PC (usually in a superior form). When it comes to games, Playstation 3 simply is targeting a completely different demographic.

Then they went and released Journey, one of the finest games I’ve ever payed. Exquisitely designed with a focus on enjoyment rather than challenge, it’s a highly linear adventure in which you play a floaty guy with a long scarf that can fly a bit, traversing a vertical world of sand and ruined architecture. Visually and aurally it’s a towering achievement and it’s also found a way to ensure rewarding co-op play between strangers, with minimal communications options actually resulting in a far more memorable and resonant experience for two players journeying together.

Simply wonderful.

Spec Ops: The Line

Talking of power corrupting, we have Spec Ops: The Line. I reviewed this in detail a while back and it’s remained my joint fave of the year, alongside Dishonoured. The difference here is that Spec Ops is all about themes and big questions, while its gameplay remains very traditional and unremarkable – although it could be argued, if one was being particularly obtuse, that Spec Ops’ mundane gameplay is a deliberate comment on the action genre.

In terms of story there’s never been a game quite like Spec Ops, and I suspect we won’t see the like of it again for quite some time.

Mass Effect 3

Here’s a game that will be remembered entirely for its last 30 minutes, a bizarre narrative mis-step that seriously pissed off a lot of people. The extended cut, for me, resolved the issues and provided a satisfactory ending to the trilogy but the key thing to note is that the entirety of ME3 is serving as en ending, not just the final scenes. It’s a game all about endings, from sacrifices by long-known characters to the end of entire races. The game does an incredible job throughout of making your decisions from the previous two games have purpose and consequence – even if your influence is not so apparent at the very end.

The conclusion to the Krogan and Geth storylines were stunning in their scope and multi-game build-up, and it’s those storylines that remain stuck in my mind, rather than the big Reaper shenanigans. Bioware’s greatest achievement with this series is in having a persistent player character, one that I’m so familiar with that it feels odd I’ll never see him again. His face is so recognisable to me that I half expect him to show up in other, unrelated games, just as a favourite actor will appear in many unconnected movies.

XCOM & FTL

Neither of these games are ones I would expect to enjoy, as I left the strategy genre behind many years ago after finding it all rather too much hard work. XCOM and FTL both manage to imbue their number crunching with emergent, player-driven narratives that feel very personal. While driven by random events and encounters, there’s just enough player influence to make it feel like I’m in charge, albeit in a difficult and unpredictable universe. They provide excellent examples of non-linear storytelling that is nonetheless powered by the player, giving the illusion of a structured, authored experience.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

War for Cybertron, the first game in this series, had largely terrible gameplay but absolutely nailed the Transformers feel. They harked back to the glory days of the 1980s G1 Transformers, with clear influence from the outstanding UK comic as well as the (mostly ropey) TV show. The style and tone served to highlight just how awful Michael Bay’s movies really are.

This year’s sequel ratchets up the storytelling and style but, most importantly, makes the game actually fun to play. The combat is fast, slick and varied. The transformations have more purpose, being actively useful in combat and exploration. The levels shift from all-out assault to stealth and semi-platforming. It’s a hilariously over-the-top game in every respect and is likely to seem like utter nonsense to anybody who isn’t already a Transformers fan. But if you still have your 1980s toys in a box in the garage, this game is made for you.

From Dust

This is quite old but I only got round to playing it this year, courtesy of a Steam sale. It’s a simplistic God game, quite short but epic in visual scope. Working against the clock to protect villages from enormouse, physics-driven tidal waves and volcanic eruptions provided perhaps the most awe-inspiring gaming moments of my year.

Dear Esther

Many people bang on about this not being a game. I’m not terribly interested in that argument and don’t feel it’s relevant to, well, much of anything. Regardless of what it is or isn’t, Dear Esther gave me a couple of hours of engrossing, whimsical story. It’s linear and basic, but the simple ability to walk around within a narrative and drive it at my own pace seems to add a level of investment that I don’t necessarily find in other mediums. It feels like something new and if anybody follows in its footsteps we could be in for some very interesting future projects indeed.

Stacking

Talking of whimsy, Double Fine have created in Stacking a gloriously silly and fun puzzle game with a beautiful, miniaturised steampunk setting. It’s a world inhabited entirely by Russian dolls, and finding the right type of doll to jump inside (ooer) is the source of all the game’s frivolity. Harmless and charming.

And finally…

Three games which I’m loving but haven’t played nearly enough to form a final opinion on would be Sword & Sworcery, Lone Survivor and The Walking Dead. All have their own unique styles and feel like they’re trying to push the edges of traditional gameplay.

Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2 surprised me by being an MMO that is actually fun – not that I actually have time to play it.

Finally, the biggest disappointment of the year has to be Max Payne 3: superb gun-wielding slo-mo action entirely ruined by an overload of cutscenes. Although I suppose that’s not quite as bad as Uncharted 3, which turned out to be rather rubbish gun-wielding made tolerable by decent storytelling.

Though I’ve barely played past the first proper mission, I feel compelled to write about Dishonored. Or Dishonoured, to spell it correctly.

Other than the very first trailer and the 3 part prequel short film, I’d carefully avoided all details of this game before release, without really knowing why. I think even from its initial announcement it had the whiff of something special.

Partly it was due to its lineage: a designer from the original Deus Ex; one of the visual geniuses behind Half Life 2; and the team that created Dark Messiah a good few years ago. Those first two games rightly hold reputations ad classics, but Dark Messiah felt like it was largely overlooked, perhaps due to its mostly inept storytelling and the naff Might & Magic brand.

Beneath the generic styling, however, was a visceral and very satisfying blend of magic and swordplay. The dual wielding mechanics were far more successful than Bioshock’s a few years later and are still decidedly more fun than the superficially similar sword & magic system in Skyrim. Dark Messiah was slick and very fun, even if it wasn’t especially memorable.

It seems that developers Arkane realised this, with the addition of Deus Ex and Half Life alumni plugging exactly the gaps the held back Dark Messiah from being great.

Which brings us to DishonoUred. Based on the first few hours at least, it’s good. Very, very good.

There’s a lot to talk about with this game, but I want to focus on one particular aspect. And to do so, I first want to rewind to the first Deus Ex game, over a decade ago.

Relatively early on in that game you find yourself in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. You’re on the streets hunting for terrorists, prowling between apartment buildings, poking your nose into seedy bars and back alleys. There’s a ton of story to discover.

Then you spot a manhole cover. Opening it up, you lower yourself into the sewers. And, if you’ve picked the right one, uncover an underground base of heavily armed militants. They’re not part of the main mission. You don’t have to o go down into those sewers. Some players will never see that entire area. That kind of level design does something to your brain. Behind the scenes, it pulls at your imagination. You’re no longer in a linear game space, going from A to B as the level designer intended. Suddenly you’re in a world.

Sure, it’s all still designed. But that knowledge in the back of your mind, that there is probably stuff you’re not seeing, is hugely powerful. It opens up possibilities and makes you think more strategically. What’s behind that door? Can I get on the roof? Does this staircase go somewhere? Importantly, it’s not about finding secrets or hidden collectibles: it’s about physical spaces that make sense.

DISHONOuRED absolutely gets this. Exploring the city streets and then an Overseer’s mansion, I realise that I’m missing huge chunks. Whole buildings and rooms that I’m not going to see. I can take the time to explore everything, or run straight past. The game leaves it up to me. And, just like that, I’m no longer playing Level 1 of a game. Instead, I’m walking the streets of a real place. The sense of location is palpable. It’s New York all over again.

Other than Human Revolution, which was specifically aiming to recapture the magic of the original Deus Ex, we haven’t seen much of this kind of game. The last decade has been about polar opposites:either the dull linearity of a Call of Duty corridor shooter (a format still capable of being made into something special, as with Half Life 2 or Spec Ops: The Line), or the broad, unfocused sweep of the Skyrims, GTAs and Arkham Asylums.

Dishonoured and the original Deus Ex fall into a third category: focused and directed but with player options within that design. It’s the best of both worlds, combining freedom with purpose.

The idea of player freedom in the last decade had been derived primarily from GTA and Elder Scrolls games. Despite Deus Ex being so revered, few games seem to have been inspired to carry on its ideas. Dishonoured has done just that, and taken it even further.

At least, that’s going by it’s first 4 hours. Here’s hoping the rest lives up to the standard it has set for itself. And let’s hope that, this time, it’s the first of many rather than a one-off anomaly.

If you’ve been ignoring Spec Ops: The Line because of its lamely generic title, leave your prejudices at the door and read on.

I played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and rather enjoyed it. I thought it was a hugely entertaining blockbuster romp with a few gut-wrenching, daring narrative moves that showed the futility of war (the nuke) and even a neat line in dark satire (the aerial targeting sequence). With each sequel it became increasingly evident that much of my praise for the game’s narrative had been me projecting. The black and white, casual killing of the aerial targeting sequence wasn’t satirising the clinical bloodthirstiness of real world tech that had transformed the Iraq war into a perceived computer game by its invading combatants; it was just a bloodthirsty sequence that thought it was cool.

As the series continued to embrace linear, scripted movie sequences (and as its supposed competitors, such as Battlefield 3, copied it shamelessly and impotently) I rapidly lost interest in the entire war genre. I rather longed for the old days, when Medal of Honour: Allied Assault and the original PC Call of Duties were about the fighting and the soldiers rather than Hollywood blockbusterising. Nothing in any recent war game came anywhere near to the shocking, revelatory and humbling D-Day beach landing on MoH:AA or the courageous, subtly heroic bridge defence in the original Call of Duty.

I largely ignored Spec Ops: The Line simply because of its uninspired title and the general sense that it was yet another over-scripted, patriotic America-Defeats-The-World rollercoaster. Rock, Paper Shotgun came to the rescue, as usual, posting an intriguing review that essentially declared the game to be absolutely horrible – in the best way possible.

They were correct: this game is horrible. Truly unpleasant. It is also brilliant and essential gaming for anybody that’s looking for some brains with their bullets.

It’s important to define expectations at the outset. Spec Ops: The Line doe not bring anything new to the table in terms of game mechanics. It is a solid, third-person, cover-based shooter with (very) light squad tactics and a handful of key decisions that affect the plot. It’s nothing you haven’t played before. The best thing to say about the gameplay is that it doesn’t get in the way of everything else the game is doing.

This loading screen sums up the game’s tone and attitude:

Early in the game the loading screens feature the usual inane text tips and vague instruction: “press spacebar to sprint” or “hold down the grenade key to aim” – that kind of thing. I’m not sure exactly when this began to change, perhaps about a third of the way in, but the usual instructional tips gradually became less frequent, replaced with definitions of cognitive dissonance and uneasy, rationalist examinations of the nature of war. This is a game that lets its protagonist’s disintegrating mental health spill over into loading and menu screens.

What begins as business-as-usual, with your small squad of American soldiers making their gung-ho way into a war-torn and sandstorm-destroyed Dubai, gradually shifts into a vision of increasing madness, both in the scenario and the state of mind of the characters. The narrative plays with uncertainty all the way through: you’re often not entirely sure who you’re fighting, or why, or who is on whose side. It makes for a disarming and disturbing experience, something I’ve never really experienced in a war game before.

And that’s without even talking about the white phosphorous bit. All I will say is to avoid spoilers, screenshots and details from now until you have played and finished the game. It’ll take you places you won’t expect and will leave you with an entirely new perspective on both war and games.

I cannot wait to see what developers Yager do next. Let’s hope they’re afforded the same creative freedom to be daring and offensive and risky.

I’ve written enthusiastically about both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. Despite flaws, they were both games that fired my imagination and lingered in memory long after the end credits rolled. Mass Effect 3 was set to do the same right up until its final 15 minutes, at which point the writing went to hell in a handbasket. It was an unfortunate ending to a trilogy of games that was groundbreaking in many ways and seemed particularly tragic given the general quality of storytelling in the rest of the game, which saw Bioware at their most deft and subtle.

After the general wail of disappointment, Bioware have spent the last few months tinkering with the ending in an attempt to end their opus on a more satisfactory note. The Extended Cut is now out and everybody appears to be weighing in on it, so I thought I’d do the same. First, though, a few words on what exactly left me disappointed by the original ending.

There will be, inevitably, vast spoilers from here onwards.

Mass Effect 3 worked for me, hitting all the story and action beats I wanted. Again and again throughout its running time it brought long-running plot arcs to a wonderful close in ways that reflected to some degree my decisions over the course of three games, from Mordin’s brilliant and bittersweet sacrifice on Tuchanka to the exquisite handling of Liara’s character. The latter in particular was handled with a subtlety and grace I’ve not seen from Bioware previously, treating the character with a maturity and respect that began with Mass Effect 2′s Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. Of all the character interactions in the series, Shepard’s evolving friendship with her seemed the most convincing.

With the climax to each successive sub-plot being handled with such dexterity I was increasingly sceptical of the increasing internet clamour regarding the ending. It didn’t seem to make sense that Bioware could handle the supporting characters so deftly and then mis-place the final piece of the story. And yet, that is precisely what happened. The ending was a convoluted, contrary, contrived mess both in terms of gameplay choices (or lack thereof), thematic resonance and character motivations.

Thematically the finale seemed to be about a different story entirely, attempting to rewrite the entire series as being about organics versus synthetics, and positing that it was an irreconcilable conflict despite huge evidence to the contrary earlier in my play of Mass Effect 3 with the positive resolution of the Geth-Quarian storylines. There was nothing wrong with an organics versus synthetics theme, as that was definitely one of the on-going themes throughout the series, but the ending presented it as the single, overriding theme. Through the deus ex machina of the starchild it was presented as the one truth of the entire series.

Compounding this was Shepard’s out-of-character acceptance of the starchild’s testimony. Regardless of how anybody played Shepard, one thing that defined him as a character throughout was a rebellious streak that refused to accept what his superiors insisted was for the best. That he would happily accept all that the starchild said without comment and then blithely commit the galaxy to a vague and apparently apocalyptic fate was unconscionable to many players.

To be clear, I didn’t outright hate the ending. I didn’t start signing petitions or declaring that I’d never buy a Bioware ever again. Instead, I felt largely nothing. After several years of becoming invested in these games, the ending had absolutely no impact on me other than to leave me slightly nonplussed. More problematic was that it seemed to render much of what had come before null and void. The fates of Quarians, Turians, Geth, Jack, Liara, Mordin, the Krogan all seemed somewhat irrelevant given that all three possible endings appeared to entirely reconfigure the galaxy to such an extent that all society, politics and economics would change.

It seemed that Bioware’s writers had rather underestimated the impact of all the mass relays being destroyed, in a galactic civilisation that relied on them for just about everything. If all roads suddenly disintegrated and made vehicular transport impossible our society would change massively in an instant. And in that scenario, there would at least be the option of walking. With mass relays gone and no replacement technology ever mentioned, billions and billions would die, one way or another.

For a (relatively short) while I wasn’t sure if I would be able to muster the enthusiasm and patience to play through the Extended Cut. Thankfully I did, as it has effectively ‘fixed’ the entire series for me, masterfully re-contextualising the finale without directly changing it. The three choices remain, the Crucible’s purpose is the same, the starchild still says his piece. Many have written about the extended endings, which are indeed more effective, but the real success is in the exchange with the starchild.

The starchild conversation, before and after the extended cut’s alterations, should be used in game storytelling lectures for years to come. It highlights how a story gives context and relevance to game mechanics. By entirely rewriting the conversation Bioware have given the ending  an entirely different context, without needing to change any of the mechanics or fundamentals. It certainly won’t work for everyone but it did for me, and the best way to examine why is to break down the story elements pre- and post-EC.

The original ending was positioned thusly:

• The starchild, catalyst, Crucible and Reapers appear to be more-or-less one and the same.
• The starchild is presented as a god character. It speaks the truth, and both Shepard and the audience should accept it as fact. It is the game’s writers, made manifest in the fiction.
• The starchild has been using a synthetic race (the Reapers) to kill and harvest organics in order to prevent organics and synthetics destroying each other in conflict. Logic weeps, yet this is presented as inarguable fact. As true as Liara is blue.
• Shepard accepts everything the starchild says without question, even though the starchild is presented as being one and the same as the Reapers.
• Shepard accepts the Crucible’s options without worrying about the consequences.

The Extended Cut’s ending, meanwhile, re-contextualises to this:

• The starchild is an AI construct created millennia ago by a now-forgotten race.
• The starchild AI was created by the ancient race to maintain peace/balance between organics and synthetics. The ancient race clearly feared the potential threat from their synthetic creations and wanted an overriding AI that could regulate their behaviour.
• The starchild AI’s programming resulted in it concluding that conflict was inevitable. To avoid total destruction of all organic and synthetic life, it concludes that harvesting all of it and storing it safely in Reaper form is the best solution.
• Crucially, the starchild AI’s conclusion is presented as fallible. Shepard questions the logic, enabling audiences to also question it without breaking the narrative.
• Shepard questions everything the starchild says.
• The starchild is separate to the Crucible.
• The Crucible is indeed a device designed specifically to stop the Reapers, passed down through successive harvested cycles. The starchild/Reapers thought that they had destroyed all plans with the previous cycle (ie, the Prothean cycle).
• The starchild is as surprised by the Crucible’s power as anybody.
• The Crucible presents the starchild with new options. For the first time in countless thousands of years, the starchild AI’s logic is able to process new possibilities. It sees that if Shepard uses the Crucible it can provide a new, more optimised answer to the conclusion it originally formed at the start of the Reaper cycle (ie, that all life should be harvested in order to keep it safe in museum form).
• Intriguingly, the starchild appears to be glad for these new options, and hopeful that Shepard will use one of them, even if that means destruction of all Reapers and the starchild. This tallies with the concept of the starchild being a logic-based AI, albeit one with a bad set of programmed parameters.
• Shepard can still choose to reject the Crucible and the starchild’s account, although this inevitably leads to a continuation of the starchild AI’s ‘solution’.

Introducing fallibility to the starchild character is what is most important about the changes Bioware have made. That one change enables the ending to occur as-is without the player having to agree or accept it. Separating the existence and purpose of the Crucible from the starchild’s own motivations completes the thematic corrections, enabling Shepard/the player to use the Crucible’s powers without feeling like they have become a gutless pawn of the Reapers.

All the extended cutscenes would have been for nothing had they not re-written this dialogue sequence. That they did then enabled me to enjoy the ending in all its bittersweet glory. The emotional impact that was missing on my first completion of the game this time was in full force and I felt the weight of three games’ worth of story, all the plot strands coming neatly and satisfyingly to a close.

I didn’t think they’d manage to fix the mess of the original ending but, remarkably, they did. Bravo, Bioware. Bravo.

My current favourite game is a tiny, lo-fi indie game called FTL. As any self-respecting genre fan will know, that stands for Faster Than Light, with the core purpose of the game to jump your spaceship from sector to sector, staying one step ahead of the pursuing rebel fleet. Along the way you encounter trade outposts, space pirates, space stations, rogue AI, asteroid belts, nebulas that fry your systems and a whole lot more – having played the alpha demo numerous times I’m still discovering new encounters.

The setting is epic but the key to FTL’s charm is in its intimate presentation, limiting your experience to the interior of your own ship plus a tactical glimpse inside enemy ships if you have the right tech. From your top-down vantage point you can oversee all of your ship’s key areas, from engines to weapons to shields, plus your small, vulnerable crew members. The challenge is in adapting to each given situation, redirecting power to different systems and moving your crew around to fix damaged areas, seal hull breaches and pilot the ship. As you travel between jump points you find equipment and salvage scrap which you can use to upgrade your ship’s systems.

Intentionally or not, FTL seems to be taking inspiration from the Battlestar Galactica board game, efficiently translating it into computer game form. It also takes the best elements of combat from the classic Star Trek and Star Wars movies, removes the technobabble and makes you feel like a proper starship captain. Like all the best games actually playing it is extremely simple, with the complexity coming in the variety of encounters and ship setups. For what is conceptually a very repetitive game, FTL does a remarkable job of keeping things fresh, allowing the simple tale of a spaceship crew on the run to unfold at a good pace and in a random but directed fashion, each encounter ramping up the tension.

FTL is currently only available as a free alpha demo using the OnLive service. The developers are currently running a Kickstarter fundraising campaign which has gone somewhat stratospheric, with the full game coming out later in 2012. I’m intrigued to see what the funds enable them to do with the game, though I do hope it doesn’t tempt them to move away from the lo-fi presentation. With luck the public backing will give them the resources to continue to add in additional encounters and polish. The core game is already in place and functioning remarkably well – from here it’s all finesse and content.

2011 was such a busy year that I have a hard time believing that it brought us Portal 2. Valve’s biggest single player game since Half Life 2 showed that they still know how to expand an idea from humble origins to something much grander, without losing the essence of what made it special in the first place. While it didn’t have the revelatory experience of those first few levels in Portal, it retained all the charm and wit while introducing a continual stream of new gameplay variations and possibly the year’s finest voice acting.

An aspect which doesn’t seem to have been discussed or lauded much is the game’s contextual use of music, the score adapting on the fly based on your activities. Hit a bounce pad and go flying through the air and the music trills with excitement. Start to align laser beams to solve a puzzle and a subtle cue gradually builds with each shift of the refracting cubes, affirming your actions and pushing you towards the solution. It’s the most successful adaptive score I’ve heard in a game and comes very close to feeling like it was composed specifically for you. If only more games would attempt to integrate their music more dynamically, rather than simply having alternating ‘Exploration’ and ‘Combat’ music.

Some people seem to have found this game sadistic and annoying. It’s definitely the former but it’s precisely that which I found so amusing, the game revelling in the absurdity of its own gruesome, contrived death traps. A man trap is one thing. A giant spider is pretty horrid, but we’ve seen them before. The entire screen rotating so as to plunge you to your doom? That’s just farcical.

Despite all the gloom and spooky atmosphere, Limbo is a game that made me laugh, chuckling as if partaking in some kind of deadly conspiracy with creator Arnt Jensen to perpetually undermine the kid’s efforts to Move From Left To Right. It’s a fascinatingly incongruous world, every few screens throwing up something entirely anachronistic to what has come before, but the gorgeous art style and mischievous humour somehow holds it all together. Crucially, it’s exactly the right length and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

More than anything, 2011 seems like the year that gaming came of age for a certain type of player. It’s that lessons of the past that seemed long-forgotten were suddenly remembered, with stunning results. This is nowhere more apparent than with the truly remarkable Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

The original Deus Ex came out a long time ago, way back in 2000. It provided several revolutions of its own, expanding or reinventing concepts of gaming narrative, non-linear progression and realistic settings, in the process distorting the boundaries between first-person shooters, stealth-em-ups and role-playing games. There’d been nothing like it before or, unfortunately, since. The promise of a new frontier of interactivity and sophistication in gaming disappeared for an entire decade, although its influence was perhaps glimpsed in hybrid titles such as Mass Effect. Even the game’s own sequel, Invisible War, didn’t seem to really understand the original’s achievements.

11 years later Deus Ex: Human Revolution arrives on the scene, developed by an entirely different team in a very different gaming industry. Technology and tastes have changed massively and I don’t think anybody truly expected Human Revolution to bear much resemblance to Deus Ex. And yet.

For those of us that were there when it all began, Eidos Montreal’s achievement still seems like it must be some kind of trick. Surely a modern, major developer couldn’t possibly have recaptured what made Deus Ex so special, and even improved and innovated beyond the original formula? After a decade, surely they hadn’t done what no other developer had even attempted? For me, Human Revolution is the year’s most remarkable game in that it manages to take everything that I loved about the original Deus Ex, update it to modern gaming standards and opens it up to a mainstream audience without losing that core personality. Perhaps that lost decade was about waiting for people that loved and understood the original to grow up and find positions in the industry? That it appears to have sold rather well is hugely exciting: perhaps we’ll finally get all those Deus Ex-inspired games that never happened?

Talking of grand returns, The Elder Scrolls returned with Skyrim in 2011. I had barely recovered from the wonderful nostalgia trip of Deus Ex: Revolution when I unexpectedly discovered that Bethesda had managed to recapture the glory of Morrowind, something that had eluded them for years. You see, I didn’t really play Morrowind. I visited it. Which undoubtedly sounds rather corny but it’s the nature of the game: quirky, obtuse, weird, difficult to get into; but wildly captivating once you got through the awkward interface and mechanics.

I was hugely excited about the follow-up, Oblivion, and initially everything seemed good, with the clunky mechanics of Morrowind much improved. After whistling through the main quest I suddenly realised that I had absolutely no investment in the world. I’d barely touched side quests or explored the world. It was lacking a soul. Matters  got worse with Bethesda’s reinvention of Fallout, with Fallout 3 being perhaps the dreariest, dullest game I’d encountered for quite some time, the potential of its world entirely hamstrung by the most appalling voice acting and animation.

Skyrim wasn’t even really on my radar. I’d simply assumed that whomever was responsible at Bethesda for the wonders of Morrowind had long since left the company. Then word started to come in that Skyrim might actually be good. Alec Meer over at RPS tipped me over the edge, writing that “I’m sorry Morrowind – I love you, but I don’t need you anymore. I think, at last, there is a new Best Elder Scrolls Ever.”

I agree.

Demonstrating how versatile the RPG genre can be, Witcher 2 strikes a very different pose than Skyrim. It perhaps even owes its allegiance more to Deus Ex than to true open world RPGs, deciding instead to embrace a strong, driving narrative within which there is huge potential for your choices to influence the outcome.

I adored the first Witcher game despite its numerous technical flaws and was therefore rather thrilled to discover that Witcher 2 propelled the series into the very top tier of gaming production values. It’s hard to choose between this, Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City as the most visually impressive PC game of the year, but in a fight I expect Witcher 2 would win because it’s not only technologically on top form but also features the most gorgeous art design, proving that you can make a medieval fantasy setting feel fresh and original and exciting despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Where Skyrim succeeds in player freedom, sometimes at the cost of a coherent, singular experience, Witcher 2 follows a twisting, forking narrative with bold characters, mostly excellent voice acting and memorable, unique locations. Crucially, as with the original it’s again a game that understands subtext, every turn of its story weaving in motivations and history that operate on levels below and above the core plot. Those subtleties sometimes leave you bewildered at the density of its political machinations but the feeling of being involved in events slightly beyond your comprehension fits perfectly with the depiction of Geralt as a reluctant hero, drawn unwillingly into a clash of kingdoms.

Almost every game I’ve played this year, I’ve thought to myself “aha, this is definitely my game of the year,” only to have that assumption usurped by the next big title. As I said, it’s been a good year. When I started writing this article, I thought that Deus Ex: Human Revolution would probably edge out the rest.

Then I remembered Bastion.

This game gets under your skin. Essentially a hack-and-slash romp with some RPG levelling/improvement elements (think Diablo, perhaps), the game rises up above its genre formula to become something magical and lyrical. It’s the ultimate testament to the power of world building, the art, music, creature design, weapon design and narration all combining transforming what might otherwise be a repetitive, derivative experience into something utterly unique.

Bastion has the warm, cosy feeling of a good book being read in bed on a cold night. It’s a triumphant melding of story and game, the final proof that even well established and tired genres could be revitalised if only developers would move beyond Burly Space Marines, American soldiers and Tolkienesque elves and wizards.

What could have been a gimmick, the narration, instead becomes the game’s beating heart, adapting to your playing style and pace in a similar fashion to Portal 2′s score. It’s a stunningly effective technique which personalises the narrative and heightens the sense of lost beauty that pervades the whole world. The game doesn’t rely solely on charm, though, with the deceptively basic combat of the first few levels developing into a hugely satisfying and customisable system after only a short while.

Unusually for an indie game, Bastion feels exceptionally well designed. The Batman games are often lauded for the effortlessness of their mechanics, which enable you to pull off increasingly complex activities without feeling overwhelmed. Bastion doesn’t attempt the same level of technological complexity but it does feature a perfect selection of diverse weapons that continually redefine the nature of the game.

If you play one game this year, make it Bastion. You know, if you like that sort of thing.

Finally…

Two other games nearly made it into this article. Batman: Arkham City is a beautifully designed game is extremely fun, but suffers from a strange density of content that entirely destroys the pacing of its storytelling, resulting in a rather flimsy and throwaway overall experience.

Battlefield 3 is a technological wonder and a brilliant online shooter, but was irrevocably marred for me by its determination to make it as hard as possible for me to actually play with my friends. While updates have apparently improved the woeful squad systems, I haven’t quite found the energy to go take another look yet.

Also, a title which may well have made my list but which I didn’t play due to absurd console game prices was Uncharted 3. I’m thoroughly looking forward to checking it out next year.

The wind cuts into my face, the only skin still exposed to the elements. Ice crunches underfoot as I approach the ruined city of Saarthal where my fellow students await my arrival–no, wait, I’m not going to do this. There are already enough blogs publishing fan-fic based on adventures in The Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim to fill a book, or several, and that’s not something I feel a particular need to contribute to, though it is testament to the immediate pull of a game that’s only been out a couple of weeks.

I may not be willing to write down my activities but that hasn’t stopped me from imposing anecdotes on anybody near enough to hear them. “I just saw a headless horseman!” “I killed a dragon!” “I climbed a mountain!” Even Rock Paper Shotgun’s initial review largely consisted of a list of “I did this!” It’s a game that naturally invites the retelling of tales due to three core design principles:

1. There is an enormous amount of content, the majority of which is entirely optional.
2. The content is spread out over a large playing area, such that players may never even find some of it.
3. Once particular content it ‘activated’, each player will experience it in a largely unique way due to the particular composition of their character. While the story beats might be the same, some will approach challenges with a sword, some with a bow, some with magic, some with a sneaky pickpocketing hand, such that even the same quests can have a different flavour for each player.

Skyrim isn’t the first to do this, of course. Most RPGs are  made up of this general formula, including previous Elder Scrolls games. Recently we were treated to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, an action/RGP/FPS hybrid that similarly encourages storytelling by establishing a set of rules and then letting the player experiment. Minecraft is the same: it operates on a simple concept of resource trees which exponentially expands from tree->wood->fire to enormous and complex player constructions.

It isn’t just about tactics, though, otherwise you’d see this kind of social story retelling for all games. What prompts players of the likes of Skyrim and Deus Ex and Minecraft to regale others with their exploits is the sense of exploration and discovery: the possibility that you’re the only person to have had that experience. In Deus Ex this might be because you used a specific combination of skills to get from A to B which another player didn’t even consider. In Minecraft there’s the knowledge that your random seed generated world is utterly unique, with nobody else on the planet having walked the same land or explored the same caves. In Skyrim, it’s that the sheer wealth of content ensures that you will be finding and doing things that friends may never stumble across, certainly once you deviate from the main quest.

Due to a chance conversation next to an old, withered tree in the town of Whiterun I later found myself in a stunning underground oasis, almost entirely hidden in an otherwise inhospitable geothermal plateau. Many players will never have that conversation, so may not find their way to the oasis. Some may stumble across the oasis entirely by chance, finding the same place but having an entirely different experience due to a lack of context.

Rather than feeling a need to see everything and explore every path, I find myself embracing the fact that I can’t possibly ever see and experience everything Skyrim has to offer. Similar to playing Minecraft, I may never know what is the other side of that mountain. But the knowledge that there is something there, even if I never see it myself, is what grants the world verisimilitude. It’s what separates these games from those which have defined, linear levels in which artificial walls, locked doors and fences box you in. Uncharted 2 might create the illusion that you’re fighting through a war-torn town, but you know that if you could somehow get past that locked door that you’d find nothing: the level only exists where the creators want you to go.

It’s not a criticism of Uncharted, of course, because it’s a game aiming to achieve something altogether different. But it is the unique factor that makes sandbox games so alluring: the possibility of what is over that next hill.

The last time I encountered a game that embraced this concept so effectively was with Morrowind, a game Bethesda made many years ago before pumping out the dreary Oblivion and Fallout 3. Skyrim marks a return to form and an understanding of what made Morrowind great that I never thought Bethesda would achieve. They even seem to have hired some writers and animators this time around – even if they still have a way to go in the voice acting department.

It took over a decade for a developer to recapture the magic of the original Deus Ex and almost the same amount of time for Bethesda to rekindle the magic they created in Morrowind. While Modern Warfare will continue to rake in absurd amounts of cash, the relative success of the likes of Human Revolution, Skyrim, Witcher 2 and Minecraft will hopefully continue to influence the industry towards a more cerebral, slower paced and sophisticated form of gaming that isn’t afraid to give players choice and consequences.

I was rather a big fan of The Witcher. The sequel is also a flawed masterpiece, although perhaps with more emphasis on ‘masterpiece’ this time around.

The Masterpiece

1. The visuals have undergone a stunning renovation compared to the original game’s trying-hard-but-ancient tech. In places The Witcher 2 is the prettiest game I’ve ever played, occasionally even outstripping the tech powerhouses from Crytek. It makes console games such as Assassin’s Creed 2 look like they’re from a previous generation, while 2011′s other big RPG, Dragon Age 2, should be feeling thoroughly embarrassed.
2. The vast majority of the dialogue and  voice acting is successful and engrossing. Characters have convincing motivations beyond simple Good Guy/Bad Guy setups and most of the actors avoid overplaying.
3. Nudity and sex make a return but in a far more mature manner than the first game’s puerile trading cards.
4. The Witcher 2 has some of the best female characters I’ve seen in games for years. And some of the best male characters, come to that.
5. The combat, when it works, is fast and fun and satisfying, a roleplaying riff on the Batman: Arkham Asylum style. Though see below for the rather major caveat on this point…
6. The main plot is twisty and turny in all the right ways, full of scheming political motivations, social injustice and obfuscated morality. There are no simple good/evil points to be earned here and the consequences of your actions are often hard to predict.
7. The politics and world being depicted is more Game of Thrones than Lord of the Rings. This is extremely refreshing.
8. At a key point in the finale, you can choose to fight the Big Bad, or simply wave a dismissive hand and walk away. This was probably my single favourite moment of the game – it works from a story perspective, but it’s also wonderfully mischievous, completely subverting the normal expectations of such games.

The Flaws

1. The difficulty curve is something of a rollercoaster, peaking in all the wrong moments. The prologue is comedically difficult, while the mid-section of the game is a more even and entertaining challenge, before returning to frustrating difficulty spikes in the finale.
2. Boss monsters are rarely worth having in a game and Witcher 2′s are some of the worst I’ve encountered. The common mistake is made of completely changing the combat and environment dynamics during boss fights in an attempt to make things exciting and fresh, when boss fights should really be about combining all your skills in new ways. Instead, the bosses are less of a test of your carefully honed skills that you’ve practised for the previous 10 hours and more a matter of trying to guess at what the game designers want you to do. A boss fight near the end of the game seriously undermined the progression of the story for me and left a rather sour memory of the climax.
3. While the politics are fascinating and involving and it’s nice being thrown in at the deep end, on occasions the motivations of the key players are a little too obtuse. An assumption is made that the player has a basic knowledge of the Witcher’s world, from the books and from the first game, and too little is done to educate the uninitiated.

Pretty pictures

I thought it best to finish off this review with an assortment of annotated screenshots. The game’s art department deserves as many screenshots as I can squeeze in.

LA Noire is coming out on PC sometime soon, which means that PC devs will have the opportunity to experience the terror of being a generation behind the curve. Console devs already bumped into this upon LA Noire’s original release, when it became instantly apparent that all other facial tech and animation is woefully inadequate.

LA Noire has rather spoilt the tidy, linear progression of gaming visuals, even if only in one very specific area. Sitting atop the unremarkable bodies of the game’s policemen, witnesses and suspects like hyper-real bobbleheads are faces which have somehow entirely bypassed the uncanny valley, presumably by building a bridge or using some kind of jet-powered supercar, leaping past the dubious accomplishments of CG cinema to give gaming a genuine first.

It’s not the technical achievement which is remarkable (though it is) but the emotional result. By serving a definite story purpose, LA Noire’s faces evade being merely the latest in a long line of graphical gimmicks (hello lens flares, hello bloom, hello depth of field). Even before any lines are spoken there’s an instant human connection, a momentary, subconscious tick in the box that confirms that, yes, this is a real person. It’s a link which other games take hours to painstakingly establish – Half Life 2’s Alyx is a sidekick who is built up over a lengthy storyline, with writing and voice acting picking up the slack in the visual detail. Regardless of how much time Valve’s animators spend on her face, she’s always evidently an animated character. Overtly stylised games like Team Fortress 2 make this the point, of course, but it’s less natural in a series that aims at realistic visuals.

It helps that the technology is married to a game which prioritises story above all other things, even at the cost of gameplay. This is a notable change from the tradition of technologically groundbreaking games being a bit sparse in the writing and acting departments – characters have never been the focus of the Call of Duties and Cryses. LA Noire is the perfect combination of tech and intent.

It’s the potential for other genres that really entices: a Mass Effect game using this tech, or, in fact, any RPG; David Cage’s experiments finally getting away from creepy eye syndrome; Valve or Bethesda playing with genuine human faces: consider Oblivion’s Patrick Stewart-powered opening sequence, but featuring Picard’s shiny pate rather than a disturbing collection of creepy, glowy, Cyrodiilic mannequins.

LA Noire at times is a little bit magical, as if a game developer bypassed the next 5-10 years of technological progress, coming back from the future so as to skip straight to the point. When Half Life 2 introduced chairs, crates and barrels that could actually be moved, any games unfortunate to be released around the same time but lacking such physics were immediately relegated to a clunky, historical footnote. The introduction of physics to gaming was a one-way street and any title at the wrong end was in trouble. Human behaviour is now at the same point, with even the admirable achievements of the Mass Effect, Crysis and Witcher games now falling short. I pity the likes of Skyrim, if Bethesda haven’t made substantial improvements to their face animation. Faces in games are likely to be logged in the case notes as ‘pre LA Noire’ and ‘post LA Noire’, and we’re currently in the awkward in-between phase when everybody is trying to figure out how to catch up.