Action-adventure games are all about open worlds with great combat/fighting, lots of missions to do, variety in activities, and even customization is great. These tend to be the heavy hitters and one of the most revolutionary genres in gaming history. There were a lot of AAA action-adventure titles this year, and a few didn’t even make it on the list. Only one can win, though.
Arkham City may be a sequel, but it’s a sequel that does everything that a sequel should do: Make everything 100x better and introduce so much new content it’s a completely different game. Arkham City has a huge open world and allows you to really feel like Batman with investigation missions, smooth and fun combat, plus all of Batty’s gadgets. This is truly a beautiful and unique game, something that all comic books games need to model from.
Technical graphics aren’t so much the art style, but what’s under the hood. Usually, games that introduce new engine or technology tend to be the best. This year was huge for DirectX 11 games on PC which can not be down on consoles. State of the art graphics cards are needed and a few games really showed this off this year. Usually, high-resolution textures, great modeling, lighting, water effects, weather, and other elements make up a good-looking game.
Were you surprised? Battlefield 3 was the only game to truly use DirectX 11 exclusively and completely left out DirectX 9 and 10. While the PC version only got this treatment the console versions looked pretty close. Battlefield 3 sported some amazing lighting effects as well as water and the textures looked real. Nothing really pushed graphics cards harder this year than Battlefield 3 so it takes the cake.
The first thing that needs to be known is that the most disappointing isn’t the worst. These are games that were greatly hyped and had so much promised, but in the end, didn’t deliver any of it. These games are playable, but barely enjoyable, but also not really terrible either. There weren’t too many disappointing games this year, but the ones that were really made an impact this year.
Rage had such strong potential over all the disappointing games this year. It had the atmosphere, guns, and even the developer behind it…like the inventor of first-person shooters id Software and they managed to screw this up. The PC version got hit the worst with bugs and glitches that are so bad id won’t even bother patching them. The console versions saw some frame rate issues, but overall better graphics were promised, a fully open-world area to explore, and the game is very repetitive with a terrible ending. Rage put me down more than any game this year so shame on id.
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.
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.
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 Cthulhu series from H.P. Lovecraft hasn’t seen much love in the form of games, but indie developers Zeboyd picked it up and turned it into a whimsical/parody 8-bit RPG, and it’s done very well. You play as Cthulhu and pick up many party members along the way, but the whole point of the game is the great dungeon crawling that harkens back to the ’80s. You can attack like any RPG, but you have tech attacks that are more powerful and magic, and then you can unite with other members to combine devastating attacks. There are a ton of different attacks you learn when you level up, and you get a choice between two different things to level up with either stats or an attack, so by the end of the game, each member has a huge arsenal to use.
The game is very close to the mythology, with bosses that are from the story, towns named after the exact towns from the stories, and art-style matches. The music is amazing, with sweeping orchestral scores (in 8-bit midi audio, mind you) that really move you and sound great. The story is hilarious, with Cthulhu trying to redeem himself and become a true hero to raise his city of R’lyeh, but his interaction with characters in the world is really funny. Of course, the game wouldn’t be complete without a huge map to explore that has some secret dungeons, plus the environments and dungeons vary with lots of loot and chests to find.
However, the game’s biggest flaw is the extreme difficulty later on in the game, as well as the constant random battles that really drag the experience down. The developers tried to tone this down by disabling random battles after you do 25 of them, but you will probably go through a dungeon before you hit that number. I also didn’t like how if you don’t level up high enough, the end boss is impossible to beat, but each dungeon just really racks up the difficulty and requires you to grind a bit to get through the dungeon. I also didn’t like how you don’t really need a strategy to beat the enemies because you can just use the same one over and over through several dungeons. This causes the feeling of repetition to set in and makes you want the game to just end a little faster.
While the visuals are nice and give you a feeling of nostalgia, they don’t look good in HD, and the lack of battle animations and everything else that goes along with 8-bit graphics grates on your eyes after a while. However, the Cthulhu license is rarely explored, so any game to do so is welcomed, but this game is probably for hardcore RPG fans.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !