Multiplayer can be put into any game, but a good multiplayer (whether it be cooperative or competitive) has to have balance, a good amount of modes, and something to set it apart from the rest. Shooters tend to be the main course when it comes to multiplayer. However, those tend to always be the same, but something needs to set it apart. Usually, it’s well-made maps, balanced weapons, and customization. Even something like poorly run servers can make online play bad. There were a lot of shooters this year, but only one topped them all.
Great maps, a beautiful game engine, vehicles, and a change in pace for unlocks and perks is what makes Battlefield 3 the top dog this year. All the rest were just perfections of what has already been down, but Battlefield 3 perfected and added on to what’s already been done. Excellent maps, great balancing, and starting you out with crappy load-outs to force you to be good makes this one shine. Not to mention up 64 players on huge Rush or Conquest matches is an absolute blast and no other shooter can pull this off.
Downloadable games get opportunities to take risks that AAA titles can’t take. Downloadable also offer one-of-a-kind experiences for a small price, and this is the place to look for that kind of experience. Downloadable games are perfect to get small doses of great gameplay, but only one can come out on top. This year showed a ton of great games that didn’t even make it onto the list. It was a tough choice, but the decision has to be made.
Vampire Smile is a stylish game that’s both gory, dark, and bursting at the seams with unique art. The story is interesting, the combat is fluid, responsive, challenging, and deep. Smile featured tons of crazy bosses, great enemies to fight, and two whole story modes to go through. Sure it was punishing sometimes, but that’s what made it rewarding. It topped them all due to all of this combined despite many amazing downloadable games this year.
A new character is very important to a game because it can make it or break it. There are also hundreds of memorable characters out there so making a new one and trying to make it on the list is hard. There were very few new characters created this year, but among the few, there was only one that was very strong.
This was an easy pick this year. Wheatley is a very funny and strange character, but being just a blinking orb makes him all that harder to pull off. It’s his personality and voice acting that really make you remember him and put him among the best. His British humor mixed with the insane world of Portal 2 really makes you want to hear him talk and come back into the world. Wheatley’s character is perfectly balanced and you get doses of him throughout the game, and you just can’t help but love him.
Voice acting is what delivers the personality in characters, and good voice acting is key to any good game. What makes it the best is a wide variety of personalities delivered by the voice actor and thus bringing out the greatness of characters. Good voice acting makes them unique, lovable, and makes you become attached to them. This year had some great AAA titles with amazing voice acting, but only one can take the prize.
Portal 2 delivers some amazing characters through witty whimsical writing and some talented voice actors. Portal 2 doesn’t just have good voice acting but diverse, funny, and unique voices for characters that are one of a kind. This is what made it top the others and is definitely something to be remembered. With characters like Wheatley, GlaDOS, Turrets, Cave Johnson, and other characters you just can’t beat that.
Graphics are great when it comes to textures, resolutions, and lighting but what about the art itself? Some games are living breathing pieces of art and are one of a kind. Sometimes a game may be inferior technically but surpass in style and better art. This year was more geared toward technical showcases, but there were a few artsy games that popped up.
Alice won over everything else because it is just oozing with art and substance from American McGee’s crazy mind. It brings out the darkness in Alice in Wonderland and every single speck on the screen has something unique about it. It has been a long time since something like this has come out where you want to hang every screenshot on your wall. Alice truly deserves this award hands down, but all I can say is you have to play it to understand why.
A great story is usually memorable and you will talk about it for years to come. You need good characters, voice acting, and a lot of other elements to make a good story. Usually, there has to be a great ending as well as some twists and turns, but it also has to make sense. A good story is probably the hardest thing to find in the video game world, but there were a lot of great ones this year, but there can be only one.
This was the toughest category this year. With so many great stories I could only choose one. Gears of War may be considered a meat head’s game, but the story branching over the three games is full of great characters and a struggle for survival that eats at your heart. These people are fighting a genocidal race of bugs, and in the meantime, they are losing their loved ones right in front of their eyes. The delivery from the voice actors just makes you care so much about Delta Squad, but overall the ending and story in Gears 3 finish the story with a tightness that most sequels can’t really pull off.
Great sound design isn’t the music but everything else you hear. Not only is variety good, but it has to match and be unique to the game and atmosphere. Everything from the wind blowing through cracks, swords clashing, breathing, grass rustling, and bullets whizzing it all makes the audio experience.
What makes the Battlefield series in the general top most games in sound design is the audio directional placement and just the sheer realism of battle. No other war game has pulled off such rich and visceral sound from bullets whizzing by your head to being able to find a sniper from distance and direction. Everything sounds hyper-realistic, but also completely ensnares you into the battle. This realistic and technically phenomenal achievement puts it over the top of everything else.
An atmosphere is what delivers emotion and overall feelings in the game. The atmosphere can make a game scary, colorful, cartoony, or make you feel alone and sad. Atmosphere much matches and represent the idea of the game. Sometimes the atmosphere isn’t delivered right and can make a game feel boring, or just look bad.
The Best Atmosphere category was even harder than last year’s because so many great AAA titles came out with strong atmospheres. There were also some games I didn’t get a chance to squeeze into the runner-up’s area so that tells you how well this category did this year. While some of the others may have better art to back up their atmosphere L.A. Noire does something that most can’t: Make an atmosphere without fancy art or licenses. L.A. Noire is a new IP and pulls off a 1940’s era in realistic detail and really pulls you in and brings you into a time period that most games don’t explore outside World War II. L.A. Noire had amazing visuals to back it, but to make the game feel so true to an era is very hard to do. You don’t need fancy art for that.
The Best Music award goes to a game that delivers emotion, atmosphere, and tension through the game’s soundtrack. Whether it be orchestral, licensed, or anything else it must feel just right.
This was a tough call against Portal 2, but Skyrim came out on top thanks to composer Jeremy Soule’s amazing passion for the Elder Scrolls game. Every piece of music moves you and sucks you into the world like no other video game soundtrack can do. There are dozens of songs and each is masterfully composed and that is extremely hard to do. Every piece fits everything you do, see, hear, or interact with within Skyrim. The sweeping and dramatic theme song to the softer tones of exploring the world is perfect and nothing can match this kind of instrumental beauty.
The locusts have finally come above ground. Every last effort made by the COG and Delta Squad has failed, and now this is their last stand. The lambent has mutated into vicious alien-type creatures. Marcus Fenix must find his dad, and two female COGs join the fight. What has all happened since our last visit three years ago? A lot, and more than just the story, has evolved.
Like I explained above, the lambent is a major threat, but it’s not them or the locust, not even Queen Myrrah, who is the main threat. I can’t say what, but it will totally shock you about halfway through the game when you find out. The story is just really solid and has a strong conclusion, but overall, the story makes you know and feel that the Gears are really desperate now. Their numbers are paper-thin, and they are doing everything they can to stay alive. You also feel the desperation of the Locust this time around, so it’s a huge tug-of-war between the two for the battle of Sera.
Overall, the gameplay is the same, but a lot of tweaks have been made to finally perfect and fine-tune the entire series. For example, the roadie run that everyone loves has now been changed to allow you to run forever, plus the camera shakes a lot more, adding some cinematic quality. A lot of past weapons have been balanced and tweaked, such as the Lancer, which now has more ammunition, less recoil, and takes a bit longer to rev up. Another example is that the active reload sweet spots have been moved around on some weapons like the Hammerburst, and the Gorgon pistol no longer has three-round bursts but continuous fire. Little changes like these really make the game feel fresh and new, but there is a lot of new stuff as well.
First and foremost, the new Lambent enemies have evolved, and the new stalks are your enemies as well. They will spawn lambents until you destroy the spawn sacs, but the lambents also vary in size, and some now don’t just die; they evolve into more hideous creatures. You fight them through about 1/4 of the game when you finally get to fight regular Locusts and Theron Guards. The environment has also changed because it has added some colors and new locales. Instead of just abandoned towns, buildings, and battlefields, you get to fight in lush jungles, beaches, and a huge ship at the beginning. This adds some color to the greatly bashed color scheme of the series. There are also new multiplayer features, but more on that later.
Some new weapons that you will run into are the OneShot, Incendiary Grenade, Digger, Retro Lancer, Sawed-Off Shotgun, and Cleaver. That may not sound like a huge number, but these weapons are great. The OneShot is a huge version of the Longshot and is a one-hit kill for every enemy. The Incendiary Grenade sets enemies on fire; the Digger acts like a Boomshot Grenade, in which it burrows underground and pops up near an enemy. The Retro Lancer doesn’t have a chainsaw but instead has a bayonet that you can charge into grubs, but the gun is highly inaccurate and has really bad recoil. The Sawed-Off is exactly what it is: a one-shot shotgun that can do one-shot kills at super close range. The gun has a long reload time, so use it very wisely. Lastly, the cleaver is a giant blade that you can use to swing around and chop off heads.
While the new weapons sound impressive, each one has an awesome new execution kill, so there are 24 in total. There are also some new campaign-exclusive weapons you can use as the new Beast Sieges, but your favorite Troikas are still here. Epic packed a lot of new content into Gears 3, so it makes it feel really fresh. Even the new character Sam is a great addition, but Anya Stroud is now the main Gears character and fights alongside you. I do have to mention one major change to the campaign: Revive. Yes, when you die, you don’t die; you can be revived, like in multiplayer now, so this also makes the campaign a little easier and doesn’t require much tactical and careful planning like in past games. Some may love it, and some may hate it.
When it comes to multiplayer, we finally get Team Deathmatch! All your other favorite modes are here, but we get a new onslaught of maps that are well designed, but you can now rank up and earn unlocks such as weapon skins, characters, and even crazier achievements. The new Beast mode is like a reversed Horde mode and is a huge blast, but Gears heroes like Dom and Marcus must be executed to die. One of my favorite things in Gears 3 is that it reads and recognizes your achievements for every Gears game (even Gears 1 on PC!) and gives you special unlocks. The Epic team really makes you feel like this is the final gear and awards you for being loyal and sticking around since E-Day 5 years ago.
Overall, Gears of War 3 is a finely tuned, well-balanced, and epic package, as well as a great finale to the long-running series. When it comes to visuals, Gears 3 looks like one of the best games of this generation (again) with updated lighting effects, higher resolution textures, and further draw distance. However, it does show its age a little in spots, but it does look jaw-dropping still. While this may be the last in the Delta Squad series, the Gears series will sit in our hearts as one of the best franchises of the generation and will never be forgotten.
Epic Edition: If you are a huge fan and really want to spend the extra whopping $90, you can buy the gigantic Epic Edition, which includes a massive statue of Marcus Fenix, replica documents from Adam Fenix, a huge award box replica with a cog that is Adam Fenix’s science award and has the Adam Fenix character unlock code on it, a COG flag, a weapons skin pack, and an art book that is the entire making of the whole series. The book is very well put together and gives you insight into the series that you will never see anywhere else. This is a beautiful package and probably one of the best collector’s editions ever made. Everything is super high quality and just amazing to look at.
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