Board 8 > Games by year, ranked and explained - part II, 2005-2016

(+) Yeah! (+)

MGS2 was definitely that bad. MGS1 could be at times. Kojima definitely has a message he wants to get across with the games, and he's often not very subtle about it.

But if you're an MGS3 fan, you stopped just short of the part of the game that's made just for you (and me).
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I loved all of 1-3. I was having a really hard time getting used to the controls for 4 before I stopped playing (which, along with probably having a bit less fun due to stressing over finding the iPod tracks, probably stopped me from following through). I think I might go back to it soon, though.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

along with probably having a bit less fun due to stressing over finding the iPod tracks

I'm glad I don't play games this way

But yeah, MGS4 plays differently than the previous games, so it takes a bit of getting used to at first.

I need to do an MGS series replay at some point. I'm long overdue for one.
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I can't play 1-3 at all. I think that gameplay is awkward as all hell. 4 played a little more traditional and is the only one I've beaten proper.
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PS1 MGS1 is really hard to play. I actually prefer to play the Twin Snakes version, as blasphemous as that is. MGS2 and MGS3 are still fun to play, in my book.
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MGS1/2/3 used to all be like top 40-games for me, but the only one I can replay now is MGS1. I still love how MGS1 plays and its cinematics are literally hours less than the rest of its series.
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I also need to replay MGS3 because I was actually only a few trophies away from the platinum
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HaRRicH posted...

its cinematics are literally hours less than the rest of its series.

I don't really view this as a positive because the cinematics are part of the appeal!

if you want an MGS game with very few cinematics play MGSV

it won't seem like a positive after that
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Whenever I hear about how good the gameplay of MGSV is, I think, "Who plays MGS for the gameplay?"
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I love MGS's gameplay! A fairly large reason why MGS2 is my favorite MGS, since I feel like 2 is the smoothest in terms of gameplay. PS1 MGS1 is really weird at first, but once you get used to all its weirdness, it becomes a fun game.

2008 is a banging year. And yet, I remember the disappointments far more than the successes. There are certainly a lot of blockbusters, though. Dunno where I would place this one.
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2009


Notable Games:

Ace Attorney Investigations
Angry Birds
Arkham Asylum
Assassin's Creed 2
Borderlands
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Demon's Souls
Devil Survivor
Dragon Age: Origins
Farmville
Flower
Half-Minute Hero
Just Dance
League Of Legends
Left 4 Dead 2
Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Punch-Out!!
Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Rock Band 3
Scribblenauts
Shadow Complex
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Splosion Man
Street Fighter IV
Torchlight
Uncharted 2
Wii Sports Resort

transience's take:

1 - Street Fighter IV
2 - Half-Minute Hero
3 - Shadow Complex
4 - Batman: Arkham Asylum
5 - Uncharted 2

Overall: 12th

Gamerankings:

1 - Uncharted 2
2 - Street Fighter 4
3 - Modern Warfare 2
4 - GTA: Chinatown Wars
5 - Arkham Asylum

GOTY Media Picks:

1 - Uncharted 2 (111)
2 - Batman: Arkham Asylum (30)
3 - Modern Warfare 2 (25)
4 - Dragon Age: Origins (21)
5 - Assassin's Creed II (14)

GameFAQs:

1 - Modern Warfare 2
2 - Uncharted 2
3 - Dragon Age: Origins

2009 is basically 2007 redux. Lots of new IPs spawned in 2007 but they weren't feature complete yet. 2009 fixed that. 2009 is sequel city but those sequels brought enough new stuff to the table that it didn't feel like a rehash year. There was also a lot of movement in the PC space but it was not the same kinds of traditional games that we had been playing for years and years. New kinds of games were spawning there.

I remember 2009 as the year for big-budget, immersive single player campaigns. Nothing exemplified this quite like Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 really blew everyone away with its effortless blend of cinematics and gameplay. It felt like playing a movie a lot of the time. The setpieces were incredible and the pacing was impossibly good. Sometimes I feel like it was too good. The highlight of Uncharted 2 was a train sequence that went for several game chapters and climaxed in the most amazing way. You can say so many positive things about Uncharted 2, from the storytelling to the facial animation to the setpiece design. I do think there are downsides to Uncharted - the "platforming", if you can call it that, is extremely linear and the endless setpiece design wears me out after a while - but this game blew minds in 2009 and is still super impressive today on every level. The pacing, man. There's never a good time to watch. It's like marathoning your favorite TV show.

Another hugely improved sequel was Assassin's Creed 2. I kind of feel like this is the only Assassin's Creed game that really matters? They've made like 10 of them but each one is less impressive than the last. AC2 featured way more gameplay diversity and a much improved story, bolstered by its new main character Ezio. AC2 is basically what people were expecting when AC1 came out and cemented Assassin's Creed as a major holiday franchise.

But AC2 was actually trumped hard by the Batman. Arkham Asylum also hit in 2009 and brought with it some amazing multi man melee combat. It basically crushed AC2's dueling combat. Not only did Arkham Asylum kill it with hand to hand combat, it also took stealth and empowered you. Instead of hiding, you were stalking. The game gave you so many toys to play with and terrorizing the enemies was great fun. Arkham Asylum was the biggest eye-opener of 2009. It was a superhero game done well - done amazing, actually. It didn't have the setpiece design of Uncharted 2 but felt a lot more authentic. It wasn't scripted in any way.
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Those games were great, but the biggest game of the year, by a mile, was Modern Warfare 2. 2008 featured a Treyarch Call of Duty and it sold millions but everyone was looking forward to the next Infinity Ward game. Call of Duty was never bigger than it was in 2009. I knew more about night vision goggles than I could ever imagine thanks to the $150 prestige edition. The expensive marketing campaign for its release was suffocating. The single player was mired in controversy by the "No Russian" level where you were shooting innocent civilians. The biggest news story of the year was when West and Zampella, CEO and COO at Infinity Ward, were suddenly fired and forcefully removed from the studio for.. we'll probably never totally know. It happened weeks before MW2 came out and was seen as a power grab by Activision to ensure that Infinity Ward was controllable. Activision had seized public enemy #1 from EA a year or two prior and this fit into that narrative. MW2 the game was pretty good - I don't think it was as universally beloved as COD4 but it did ratchet up the action and kept COD on top of the game. It would remain on top of the industry for several more years.

My game of the year, and one of the biggest games of the generation, was Street Fighter IV. It might be my game of the decade too. SF4 hit at the perfect time. It was a fantastic revival of a dormant franchise; better yet, it was revived by simply going back to what made the series great: Street Fighter 2. It had a familiar core and new systems that felt good. Perhaps more notable than the game itself is the culture surrounding it. SF4 hit alongside streaming sites like justin.tv and and ustream. Youtube was ubiquitous enough that you could find the world's best matches on demand. Tournaments were streamed each weekend; Evo 2009 was the first year that Evo really exploded in popularity, again, thanks to the synergy of streaming and SF4. Uncharted 2 and Arkham Asylum were amazing games but most people ripped through them in a week. SF4 was the biggest fighting game in the world for 6 or 7 years.

XBLA was tame compared to 2008's year of the ever, but it did feature one huge game: Shadow Complex. Here was an Epic subsidiary making a Super Metroid-like in Unreal Engine. Weird! It was also pretty awesome. In the years since Shadow Complex, the indie scene took over and made a bazillion Metroid-likes, but in 2009 it felt like a great rebirth of a long dead genre. Shadow Complex was visually bland and the 2.5d wasn't my favorite, but the progression and the weapons felt pretty darn good.

Those were the really big games on console. Dragon Age was a nice throwback isometric RPG from Bioware; Demon's Souls hit on PS3 to relatively little fanfare and won Gamespot's GOTY; Left 4 Dead 2 iterated on the L4D formula and was most notable for being a surprisingly quick sequel from a company that usually supports the hell out of their games; Borderlands combined FPS games with Diablo to create the loot shooter; Resident Evil 5 hit and was way more action-y than previous games, and ultimately pretty disappointing when compared to the amazing RE4. Nintendo put out Wii Sports Resort with motion plus, which was a good one of those but a.) most people were over those kinds of games and b.) it lacked the charm that the original Wii Sports had. Nintendo also put out NSMB Wii, a much-improved game from the original NSMB. NSMB played like Mario 1 whereas NSMB Wii felt more like a Mario 3. Ubisoft put out Just Dance, a waggle dance game that sold like ten million copies or something dumb like that.
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From here, this writeup gets weird. Traditional video games were great in 2009 but there was a sea change coming. You can argue that I haven't talked about the three, maybe four biggest games of the year. The biggest game, and maybe still the biggest game in the world? not sure, is League of Legends. I'm not going to try to justify League with a writeup because I just won't do it justice. It hugely popularized a genre that we couldn't put a name to for years, the MOBA. It was free with paid unlockable characters. It puts other multiplayer games to shame in terms of popularity. MOBAs were the natural evolution of things like RTS. Starcraft 2 wouldn't hit until next year but it had already been outdone. League was the future.

You probably hate the very idea, but one of the hugest games going at this time was Farmville. Facebook games were at their most deceptive around this time and Farmville sucked in probably tens of millions of people. I've actually never played it because screw that. Another game that touched maybe hundreds of millions of people was Angry Birds. The iPhone came out in 2007 but I don't feel like it had a truly 'killer' gaming app until Angry Birds. Angry Birds's success - which still baffles me - spawned a clothing line, a movie and you name it. Angry Birds would birth the rise of other similarly simple phone games like Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, Cut the Rope. etc.

The last game wasn't even feature complete. Minecraft alpha hit in 2009. I don't think Minecraft blew up like we think of it until its official release in 2011 so I'm going to hold off on writing about it. It does deserve a quick shout-out though. 2009 began the shift away from big action games and towards a new frontier. Games were diversifying. By 2009, I feel like it was kind of impossible to have one gigantic megagame that everyone played like an Ocarina or a FF7. There were just so many different kinds of games being played by so many different kinds of game players.

Anyway, back to regular old games. The DS rebounded from a somewhat lackluster 2008 (at least relative to everyone else's output) with some good adventure-y games. Ace Attorney Investigations was a nice spinoff after AA4 made it seem like the series was narratively toast. 999 was a very different, more visceral kind of visual novel but it was an immediate hit thanks to its creative premise and wild plot. Mario and Luigi had a nice comeback with Bowser's Inside Story. There were a couple of SMT games. Rockstar made a weird throwback GTA game on DS that was a huge critical hit and made its way to PSP before the year ended. I don't think it really resonated with fans too much due to its portable nature.

Speaking of the PSP, it also had Half-Minute Hero, an irreverent callback to classic RPGs that streamlines everything from battle to plot as far as it can possibly go. HMH was a really charming and fun game. The PSP really found its stride here after a several year struggle. There was a vibe and a style to these japanese PSP offerings that really hit home with me. If you ask me what's better, the PSP or the DS, I'll probably go DS. But if you asked for a top 10 games between the two platforms, I might end up with the PSP on top.

2009, in a nutshell, was a year of great sequels on console and great leaps on PC. Handhelds pretty much stayed the course and delivered solid output. In a way, I feel like 2009 is the last 'classic' year of video games - starting with the new decade, games didn't fit into neat categories anymore. The indie scene was about to blow up and with it, the PC.
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Arkham Asylum
Assassin's Creed 2
Borderlands
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Dragon Age: Origins
Resident Evil 5
Uncharted 2

I think 2009 might be my #1 year in gaming. Arkham Asylum, RE5, and Uncharted 2 are all Top 20 games for me, and the rest aren't too far behind.
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UC2, Borderlands, Arkham Asylum, SF4. Great year.

I spent so much time playing UC2 online with the board 8 crew, and a lot of time playing Borderlands couch co-op with a friend.
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transience posted...

Call of Duty was never bigger than it was in 2009.

I'm not sure that's right. Black Ops would out sell it next year. So will Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops II. If the numbers I have are correct, Black Ops 3 from 2015 did as well. It's really only Infinite Warfare from 2016 that seemed to be a misstep.
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I remember Braid causing "$15 for a downloadable indie game??" arguments. Such a weird concept by today's standards. Those arguments piqued my interest in Braid because I thought they were dumb as hell and it kinda made the game a scrappy underdog on my eyes.

I don't think Uncharted 2 holds up that well. It was a groundbreaking cinematic experience but lots of games do cinematics almost on that level these days. Take that away and the gameplay sucks.

Dragon Age deserves both more and less credit than your post gave it. That series is big in a sneaky way. Pretty sure Origins is actually Biowares best selling game ever! It's never gotten the mainstream hype that Mass Effect gets though, and has played second fiddle ever since DA2 unimpressed and ME2 did the opposite.
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Black Ops is probably peak Call of Duty yes, but I think in terms of awareness and interest, MW2 was the apex. I wouldn't put it all on sales, not when everything sells 10 million.
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2009: Uncharted 2 > Street Fighter IV > Bowser's Inside Story > Assassin's Creed II > Ace Attorney Investigations > 999
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Flower & Demon's Souls <3

Also I'm one of those horrible people who really like Resident Evil 5.
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ack, ace attorney investigations is 2009 in japan and 2010 in NA

gotta mix things up once in a while!
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TWEWY is excellent. One of, if not the best DS game ever.

Also going back to 2002, my GotY and maybe GoaT is Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 for the GCN. I've put more hours into that game than any other by a huge margin. I played both online and offline.
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transience posted...

Angry Birds's success - which still baffles me -

What's baffling about it? It's a near-perfect smartphone experience.

Or do you mean it's crazy that it became a successful cross-media franchise, which, yeah, I can see that as baffling.
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do you think it's near-perfect? I think it's.. okay?, but not something that would get trillions of people to play it. it isn't tactile like some touch games (like fruit ninja) and it isn't super addicting (like any number of f2p games).
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Angry Birds was great, despite not being a big mobile gamer, I constantly played it back in high school
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transience posted...

do you think it's near-perfect? I think it's.. okay?, but not something that would get trillions of people to play it. it isn't tactile like some touch games (like fruit ninja) and it isn't super addicting (like any number of f2p games).

People love physics engines running wild. All those high sales for ___ Simulator aren't flukes!
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maybe it's just me!
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Also I don't think F2P hooks had been perfected yet.

Cheap little fun game you can pull out and play literally anywhere you have 5 minutes without having to bring an extra device. A+!
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hmmmm. I feel like there was some of that, but it was more on things like facebook. ios was still young and I always felt like that device drove a lot of that.
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2010


Notable Games:

Ace Attorney Investigations
Alan Wake
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Bayonetta
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Dance Central
Darksiders
Dragon Quest IX
Etrian Odyssey 3
Fallout: New Vegas
Final Fantasy XIII
Fruit Ninja
God Of War 3
Heavy Rain
Just Cause 2
Kirby's Epic Yarn
Limbo
Mafia 2
Mass Effect 2
Metroid: Other M
Nier
Pac Man CE DX
Persona 3 Portable
Radiant Historia
Red Dead Redemption
Rock Band 3
Starcraft 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Super Meat Boy
Super Street Fighter 4
VVVVVV

transience's take:

1 - Persona 3 Portable
2 - VVVVVV
3 - Etrian Odyssey 3
4 - Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman
5 - Pac-Man CE DX

Overall: 22nd

Gamerankings:

1 - Super Mario Galaxy 2
2 - Mass Effect 2
3 - Red Dead Redemption
4 - Starcraft 2
5 - Rock Band 3

GOTY Media Picks:

1 - Red Dead Redemption (111)
2 - Mass Effect 2 (101)
3 - Super Mario Galaxy 2 (19)
4 - Heavy Rain (12)
5 - God of War 3 (7)

GameFAQs:

1 - Mass Effect 2
2 - Super Mario Galaxy 2
3 - God of War 3

When I think of 2010, I think of disappointment. There were a lot of big games that just missed the mark. Metroid: Other M had a fantastic reveal trailer, lost some steam when everyone learned you controlled it with a d-pad and then became widely mocked for its laughable narrative that threatened to kill the series. (In a way, it did. We haven't seen a real Metroid since.) Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty wasn't bad but the phased rollout (part 1 of 3) felt greedy, doubly so since the 2008 merger with Activision. The gaming landscape surrounding Starcraft had also changed - battle.net wasn't the dominant force anymore and a lot of people were looking at the MOBA scene, particularly League. Fallout: New Vegas ended up being pretty well-liked by the end of it, but the game was a technical mess at launch. Limbo was a really striking looking XBLA game that was not nearly as fun to play as everyone built it up to be. Dragon Quest IX eschewed consoles for the DS, a huge controversy in and of itself, and ended up being a tame throwback without a lot of charm after the brilliant DQ8 moved the franchise so far forward.

The biggest disappointment had to be Final Fantasy XIII. Half of that was the game and half were the expectations. FF13 had the fabula nova crystallis hype. It was being made by the 7/8/10 guys. It was supposed to be a grand return to form. Lightning was basically being portrayed as female Cloud. It had been announced 4 years ago and the trailers looked great. FF13 had damn good art.

But the game just wasn't very good. A lot is made of the linearity and the fact that the game doesn't let you loose for 20 hours. That's a convenient shortcut to badmouth the game but I don't think it's the true shortcoming. These complaints could be leveled at FFX as well and that game's an all-timer. FF13 just didn't have a good narrative. The characters and story were a letdown after two decades of fun -- not necessarily good, but fun -- scenarios. The world looked great but it didn't feel good to play it. It was fine, but nothing more, and that was really disappointing after so long.
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But 2010 wasn't all bad. It actually had a few really killer games. Super Mario Galaxy 2 ranks among the best rated games of all-time and big 3d Mario fans seem to prefer it to the first Galaxy. I don't think it resonated with a lot of people though. Everyone was pretty much over the Wii by 2010 and they had already played a great Mario game on there. Everyone agreed it was great but not many put it in their top xx games of all time. Sometimes a game is technically fantastic but not that exciting. That's Galaxy 2.

Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, was beloved by pretty much everyone. It took the formula in 1, reworked the gameplay to be more of a shooter and promoted the characters heavily with personal stories. It was easily the high point of the Mass Effect series. Red Dead Redemption blew people away with its setting. A lot of people were tired of the GTA formula but were much more receptive to it when it had a western look and feel. It helped that it had a great story with a likable main character. RDR is thought of as one of the high points of the 360/PS3 generation. Heavy Rain also came out. Reception was mixed but it was a QTE narrative game with a big budget. That was unique and it found a fanbase as a result.

My favorite game was a port, but a great one. Persona 3 is a game with an awesome setting and great music but playing it could get real frustrating. Persona 3 Portable added a ton of quality of life tweaks to speed up the game, give you direct control over your characters and even added a second route with a female lead. It also helped that it was portable. Persona works really well on a portable. I haven't bought Persona 5 solely because I don't know if I have 100 hours in front of a TV in me. 2010 is a portable year for me for P3P and others.

Digital games had a nice year. The biggest game might have been Super Meat Boy, a platformer stripped down to its most essential elements. SMB (no coincidence) was a love letter to the indie scene and had lightning fast movement speed and controls. It quickly became a mainstream hit. Pac-Man CE DX was a shocking remix of the Pac-Man formula where you chase the ghosts instead of the ghosts chasing you. It is a dopamine-triggering fever dream and feels really good to play. My personal favorite was VVVVVV, a brilliant one-button platformer with great level design and fantastic music. Everyone in 2010 was singing Super Meat Boy's praises but I thought VVVVVV was much better.

2010 was really a portable year for me though. The Edgeworth spinoff game was fun. Etrian Odyssey 3 was the first really great game in the series. It had good character balance and some tweaks to the formula that mixed up the traditional mapmaking and adventuring. My favorite Nippon Ichi game came out on the PSP: ZHP, a weird roguelike SRPG with a surprisingly funny sense of humor when compared to the Disgaea games.

2010 wasn't awful, just a little underwhelming after a couple of great years. Japan specifically had an off year, though Galaxy 2 picked up the slack. I probably played more SF4 than anything else in 2010 thanks to the much-improved Super Street Fighter 4. Persona and digital titles were great and Mass Effect/Red Dead picked up the slack for the AAA games.
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2010: Mario Galaxy 2 > Mass Effect 2 > Super Street Fighter IV > Nier > Final Fantasy XIII > VVVVVV > Brotherhood

Pretty good year, actually!
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Damn 2010 stunk.
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2010 doesn't seem disappointing at all to me. Had some great games come out.
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I look at 2010 and think it looks fine, but then I think FF13 is quite underrated due to coming out in the age where western gaming circles had decided they hated linearity (I think FFX would have been way less critically adored in 2010 too, despite agreeing that FFX is indeed still an all-timer). I see that, ME2, VVVVVV, SMG2, Nier, AAI, and Radiant Historia... plenty of good stuff! And I say that as someone who is less impressed by SMG2 than most (too much "more of the same" compared to SMG1... but it's still good).
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transience posted...

But the game just wasn't very good. A lot is made of the linearity and the fact that the game doesn't let you loose for 20 hours. That's a convenient shortcut to badmouth the game but I don't think it's the true shortcoming. These complaints could be leveled at FFX as well and that game's an all-timer. FF13 just didn't have a good narrative. The characters and story were a letdown after two decades of fun -- not necessarily good, but fun -- scenarios. The world looked great but it didn't feel good to play it. It was fine, but nothing more, and that was really disappointing after so long.

This exactly. I've seen the complaints about linearity, but that was never one of my problems with it. I stuck with the game through the part where the world opened up because people said it gets better, but I never saw any improvement in the convoluted story or unlikable characters.

Waluigi1 posted...

2010 doesn't seem disappointing at all to me. Had some great games come out.

It's did. Just personal opinion, I enjoyed lots of the 2010 releases but there isn't any id call amazing or great, just good. Super Mario Galaxy 2 & Bayonetta may be the exception I suppose, but even then if a game leaves me with no desire to replay it ever again regardless of my initial enjoyment I tend to leave it off the "great" lIst. I've replayed the original super Mario Galaxy a few times.
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FFXIII was great in 2010 and it's great now.
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i have practically nada to say about those years! AAI is literally the only 2010 game i even touched
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2011


Notable Games:

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 (jp)
Bastion
Batman: Arkham City
Binding Of Isaac
Catherine
Dark Souls
Dead Space 2
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Duke Nukem Forever
Ghost Trick
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Jetpack Joyride
Mario Kart 7
Minecraft
Mortal Kombat
Outland
Pokemon Black/White
Portal 2
Saints Row: The Third
Skylanders
Skyrim
Sonic Generations
Super Mario 3D Land
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)
Terraria
Trails In The Sky
Uncharted 3
Witcher 2
Zelda: Skyward Sword

transience's take:

1 - Outland
2 - Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)
3 - Ace Attorney Investigations 2 (jp)
4 - The Binding of Isaac
5 - Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

Overall: 5th

Gamerankings:

1 - Arkham City
2 - Portal 2
3 - Skyrim
4 - Zelda: Skyward Sword
5 - LittleBigPlanet 2

GOTY Picks:

1 - Skyrim (227)
2 - Portal 2 (58)
3 - Arkham City (40)
4 - Uncharted 3 (20)
5 - Skyward Sword (18)

GameFAQs:

1 - Skyrim
2 - Skyward Sword
3 - Arkham City

Skyrim may be the last truly huge game, one that everyone played. Video games fractured around 2009 or 2010; phones took over, free to play got big, Minecraft exploded, MOBAs and Steam splintered the PC audience into many smaller pieces, survival games.. you name it, it got big in its own way. People naturally shrunk into smaller youtube communities or fan sites or subreddits or wikis. It became extremely difficult to find a game that could bring everyone together.

Skyrim was able to do just that. It united the PC and console audience. Its world was so big and its interactions so emergent that it became perfect youtube and gif fodder. Everyone has a Skyrim story. It was a meme unto itself. It basically became a game that casual players would play, like a GTA. It's probably sold like 30 million copies or something dumb. My brother doesn't play video games but he texted me to ask what console he should buy so he could play Skyrim. That game was a monster. It took over 2011 and even 2012. I can only think of one or two games since 2011 that would even enter the conversation.

2011 was a year of big games again after a quieter year. Uncharted and Batman renewed their GOTY rivalry from 2009 with new games. Uncharted 3 was largely seen as pretty darn good, but not as amazing as Uncharted 2; Arkham City went open world and was maybe a smidge more fun to play as a result. Arkham City had incredible reviews while Uncharted had great ones. Both games buckled to Skyrim, but they were still pretty good.

A Zelda game came out too. It was on the fading Wii and it had forced motion controls, a step and a half further than Twilight Princess went. Wii Motion Plus was probably made for this game. It took forever to release and my expectation is that the game was just not working without better hardware. Then again, every Zelda takes forever to release now. Skyward Sword was liked by the people who played it but a lot of people saw the Wii, saw motion controls and noped right out of there. It's probably one of the lowest regarded Zeldas which sounds bad until you realize that mainline Zeldas are all pretty much revered. That series has the greatest legacy of them all.
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Valve's last single player campaign came out in 2011 too. Portal 2 iterated on the original. Everything was more involved: the puzzle, the narrative, there was even a complete co-op that you didn't know you wanted until it came out and was awesome. I didn't like Portal 2 nearly as much as the original: there was a simplicity and efficiency to that game that was lost when the game added layers of complexity. It was never simply about flinging yourself anymore. Now you had to find the perfect solution. (Well, moreso than the original which felt very DIY). Portal 2 improved on the concept but lost players like me in the process. Valve disappeared from single player gaming at this point: DOTA 2 would go into open beta in 2011 and Valve never looked back. Fans have been distraught ever since.

2011 didn't lack for huge games. I've written a post or two so far and haven't even mentioned the launch of the 3DS. The 3DS was a weird thing - glasses-free 3d that worked. There was a ton of debate on if people wanted this or not: most people were on the fence but said that the only way it would work is if you didn't need any glasses. The 3DS showed well but it had a $249 price tag, much higher than the DS and without a strong library of launch games. The highlight was probably a port of Street Fighter 4?, and maybe Pilotwings. Sales lagged and Nintendo did something unprecedented, slashing the price $80 and offering an 'ambassador' program for early adopters in the form of ten free virtual console games. The 3DS was sketchy until Mario and Mario Kart came out during the holiday season. There was a smattering of classic 64 ports like Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 to keep people going. It was really a botched launch. If they had any actual competition it might have mattered.

The biggest news of the year had to be the hack. The Playstation 3 was finally hitting its stride. It finally had some killer games like Uncharted 2 and God of War 3. Their online offerings were getting better. Trophies showed up in 2008 and most games had them by 2010. (MGS4 wouldn't have them until 2012.) Gabe Newell went on stage at E3 2010 to announce that Portal 2 would have cross-play on PS3 with Steam, making it the definitive console version. Mortal Kombat 9 was going to hit on the same day ("Portal Kombat" day). And then, just like that, PSN was dead. At first it was just down. It took days to even understand what was happening. Eventually Congress got involved. PSN was down for a total of 23 days, basically missed the launch of two huge games in full, rendered a SOCOM game completely unplayable for its first month and led to an epic bow of shame by Kaz Hirai and friends. Ugh. It's kind of amazing how far this has disappeared from the limelight. People seem to trust Sony and their online services again. It's only been six years!
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I liked this year's blockbuster games, but as usual, I was more into smaller offerings. Outland was a fantastic downloadable game that blended elements of Metroid, Ikaruga and Shadow of the Colossus. It might be my favourite downloadable game from this generation. It got buried due to it releasing during the hack but has gathered some fans due to positive word of mouth over the years. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was another Metroid-like with fantastic visuals and animation. It nailed the vibe hard but didn't quite figure out the nonlinear exploration side of things. I still liked it a lot. Bastion was a 2d action game that played incredibly well and had an interesting vibe thanks to a narrator voicing everything that you did. It was a sneaky good year for XBLA and PSN. better than 2010.

The DS and PSP were also good while the 3DS was floundering. You had Ghost Trick and Pokemon on the DS: those were good, but the star of the year was a game that never made it here, Ace Attorney Investigations 2. The PSP had Trails in the Sky which is still on my backlog of shame. I don't really care about backlogs that much as there are hundreds of games I will never get to, but Trails is one with enough positive buzz that I need to give it a go and see what the big deal is. The big PSP game of 2011 was Tactics Ogre. TO was modernized mechanically and given an incredible localization. TO:LUCT is the only other game to ever match what FFT set out to do -- complex SRPG battles with a job system, a convoluted political story and a great medieval vibe -- and the remake really teases fans who want to see more games in that vein. I've been a Tactics Ogre fan since its NA release in 1998 so this was my most anticipated game of the year.. well, except for one game that released in English in 2011 but didn't hit NA until 2012. We'll talk about Xenoblade soon.

Minecraft officially released in 2011. I can't even grasp Minecraft. It's become this seminal experience that all children go through. I have kids and thus I have a copy of Minecraft. It's a polarizing game for people of my generation because it has no real goal or endgame. More and more games do this now. You're given an amazing world and expected to go make what you want out of it. Games from my childhood had a set path: you ran right and grabbed the flag, or retrieved the triforce or saved the world. You did something. It's been fascinating to watch the Minecraft generation grow up without those shackles. We would see a lot more sandbox games in the future. You can even find Minecraft's influences in more traditional games like the new Zelda. Crafting and cooking and survival would become a go-to of many games, even moreso than before.

Other great games came out too. The Binding of Isaac released as a flash game on PC in 2011. It was a side project to distract from Super Meat Boy that became bigger than that game had any right to be. It also opened the doors to the 'roguelite' genre -- procedurally generated levels with permadeath, but made a little more friendly by traditional gameplay and content unlocks -- that has seen a boom in the past five years. Dark Souls might be one of the five or so most influential games of this gen. Everything these days is Dark Souls x something. It seemed to take people a while to totally 'get' Dark Souls and what the appeal was but now it's universally regarded as an all-time great. Saints Row: The Third was an awesome open world game thanks to its irreverence and its surprisingly smart mission design. SR3 has some of the best open world missions that I've played. I'm not a pro at the genre but I loved seeing this one through. And finally, Duke Nukem Forever came out after about 15 years of being the biggest joke on the planet only to end up being absolutely terrible by almost every account. Some jokes are better off unreleased.

2011 is great! The big budget games brought it and the smaller ones did as well.
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2011: Trails in the Sky SC > Sonic Generations > Ace Attorney Investigations 2 > Portal 2 > Uncharted 3 > Trails in the Sky FC > Mario Kart 7 > Ghost Trick > Super Mario 3D Land > Outland
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Ghost Trick was great. I kinda hope we get another one at some point, though I don't know how convoluted of an excuse they'd have to make for it in the plot.

Still haven't played Skyrim! I wasn't really playing many console games around this time. I also only got like 5 hours into Skyward Sword before getting fed up with the motion controls and quitting.

I bought the 3DS at launch despite the terrible launch lineup purely because my DS's battery life sucked.
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2011 - Hackers access data of 77 million PSN users.
2016 - Yahoo says 1 billion user accounts were hacked.

The PSN breach is sort of small fry by modern standards. I think people may just be getting used to companies leaking their data.
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I think you're missing a big piece of that - yahoo didn't go down for nearly a month.
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My great purchasing decision of 2011: Scambassador! Got the twenty games with the $80 cut, brand new. The 3DS allowed just the perfect window to do this right.

My awful purchasing decision of 2011: preordered Duke Nukem Forever on Steam. Turns out all I wanted was proof that it existed...game sucks though! Should have just bought the box several months later.
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transience posted...

Skyrim may be the last truly huge game, one that everyone played.

GTAV says hi
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Wait, TO:LUCT came out in 2011? That feel so much older than that.
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