The technical category skirts art and pushes you to console to the max. Games that use DirectX 11 on PC, or really push consoles to their ultimate processing get this award. They also have to do it right and use a lot of advanced techniques, or brand new techniques. Since the consoles are 7 years old they usually don’t win this category anymore, but it doesn’t mean they don’t look fantastic.
Yes, all these games have their PC versions nominated, and yes they all use DirectX 11. Far Cry 3 uses it the best this year with fantastic lighting effects, amazing textures, and an astounding draw distance. The lighting looks so real you almost start looking for sunglasses! This game will also push your PC to its max and suck out the power of the latest PC gaming technology. It was hard to choose between these 5, but that draw distance and amazing light effects really put this on top, but just barely.
This looks like the same thing as Best Graphics, Technical but it isn’t! I swear it is a coincidence! Best voice acting consists of professional actors that can carry across a personality and deliver the character so you believe it. There were many games this year that had great voice acting and I couldn’t slide them all in. Honorable mentions go to Max Payne 3,Mass Effect 3, Dishonored, Borderlands 2, and Halo 4. This was one of the toughest categories this year because of TOO many choices instead of not enough.
Hitman’s voice acting is so great because of the way the characters deliver it on screen. Each one is completely different from the other and they are all evil bastards that you want to punch in the face. The lip-synching is amazing and spot on and the facial expressions really bring out the voices. This was tough among many other games, my second choice was Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3, but something about Absolution’s voice acting just sucks you into this experience.
This has probably been the strongest indie game year yet. Many have even beat out AAA high budget titles so that says a lot. There were so many amazing indie games this year it was really hard to pick just 5. These were the best of the bunch.
thatgamecompany has really proven to be an extremely talented indie developer. From their last game Flower to this, I can’t wait to see what’s next. Hotline Miami came in a close second, but the soundtrack, art style, and just overall beauty of the game really won it over.
Graphics are great in games, but some just strive to be artistically beautiful rather than push your hardware to the limits. There were quite a few beautiful games in the indie department this year, but still a smaller amount than last year. These games look like moving paintings or drawings. These are the most beautiful of them all.
Journey’s art style just breathes artistic flow and imagination. Despite the brown color palette the overall design choices, effects, and visual representation of everything you see are just fantastic. Combined with a beautiful score, Journey is a one of a kind game that AAA titles can’t seem to provide.
Storytelling in games is probably the most important thing. Even if your game has good graphics if there’s nothing to follow why bother? There a few great games with good stories, but most of them were the endings to long-running series. These were the best of the bunch.
A great story isn’t just about plot twists or mystery. Being in suspense and actually giving you the option to make those twists and turns is revolutionary. The Walking Dead has a story that will tug at your heartstrings and even make you shed a tear or two. Being in total control also gives you multiple possibilities throughout the whole series. This is by far the best story this year, and I can’t wait for Season 2.
The best sound design consists of effects, music, voice acting, variety, and overall immersion accomplished through sounds. Ambiance has a huge factor as well. A lot of games these days sound really good, but the best will give you total immersion with background noises and little effects that don’t have to be there, but they are because the developers care that much.
The sound design in AC3 is just fantastic. The various accents, different languages used, the sound effects used in the Frontier such as the wind during snowstorms, the sounds of wildlife, then the bustling city sounds in the cities. The naval battles just pack a punch in your ears. The cannon fire, the various ship crew yelling things at each other, the sounds of the ocean. There is so much variety there and it is so crisp and clear. This is the best sounding game this year.
The atmosphere in a game is the overall immersion you get. You have to believe you are in the game and that the whole world is real, but also feel a part of it. There were a lot of games that pulled off some great atmosphere this year, so this category was tough. Most of the atmosphere this year was focused on realistic or futuristic settings. These were the best of them all.
Assassin’s Creed III really showed off the American Revolution and colonial times. The game really made you feel like you were there. The Frontier, Boston, and New York were both well designed as well as the costumes, accents, objects, and even the hunting! You just felt like you took a trip to the past. This was a tough choice over The Walking Dead, hell, all the games in this category were hard to choose from. This won due to the attention to detail and mainly because it is a setting and time period rarely explored in games.
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. There weren’t many games with great soundtracks this year, but there were a few. These were the best, but only one comes out on top.
Journey comes out on top because of how rich and powerful the score is. It reminds me a lot of Skyrim, and hey, it was up for a Grammy! Journey is not only a very unique game, but the soundtrack pulls you in and provides feelings and emotions on top of the visual experience. Mass Effect 3 was very close, but the epic space battle music doesn’t compare to this masterpiece.
Liberation is probably one of the most anticipated games for Vita, right next to Uncharted and Mortal Kombat. Like both of those games, it doesn’t live up to their console counterparts or everyone’s expectations. Liberation is probably the most disappointing of the three, but it is still a solid game. The problem with Liberation is that it is sloppy and felt slightly rushed to meet the Assassin’s Creed III console release. Aveline is an excellent protagonist and a very interesting character, but the narrative is very confusing and just feels slapped together. It only makes sense, or gets interesting, towards the last two sequences of the game.
Like all the other portable AC games, Desmond Miles doesn’t make an appearance in this game. You just started out as Aveline in New Orleans before the American Revolution started. New Orleans is occupied by the French, and the Spanish are busy selling slaves from Africa and trying to take control of New Orleans. Aveline, being a slave herself, is now freed by her stepmother but joins the Assassin Brotherhood by a leader who lives in the Bayou to free these slaves. This sounds very interesting, and it is, but it lacks the expansiveness of AC3. The story is very short, and it doesn’t allow enough time to tell a rich story. The side characters are forgettable, and Aveline barely gets enough time to really show her personality. I was highly disappointed with this, but the disappointments don’t end there.
The game is mostly like AC3, in terms of combat, animations, the control scheme, and whatnot. There are some Vita-specific features, but they fall flat. You pickpocket by zooming in on the character and running your finger down the rear touchpad; this makes it very cumbersome. You can open letters by pinching the top of the screen and sliding it, but it doesn’t work as it should. There’s even a weird puzzle thing that uses the Vita’s camera by holding it up to the light at a certain angle and turning a dial on the touchscreen. This also doesn’t work like it should and is confusing.
Combat is the same as AC3 and thankfully that hasn’t been broken. The combat system is very fluid and just feels so good. However, your assassin recruiting abilities are now gone. You have to use them in the world by interacting with an NPC and starting that ability. I really didn’t like this. Aveline has a couple new weapons, like the sugar cane machete and whip she can use to swing around some ledges. She has a pistol, as well as a blowpipe and parasol gun! The weapons are really neat and work well within the setting. Aveline can also use three different personas, which are an assassin, a lady, and a slave. The lady can’t climb around anywhere, but it is good for bribing certain soldiers to get into areas you need and blending in with certain crowds. The slave persona can blend in with slave workers, but the assassin has all weapons available but always has a minimum notoriety of level 1. The problem is that these personas are only useful during the main missions, but each one has a certain collectible that only that persona can get. Other than that, these personas feel useless. great idea, but not fully fleshed out.
Another issue is the world you’re exploring. The Bayou isn’t a fun place to be because you wind up swimming 70% of the area or being forced to climb around trees up top. Hunting was completely removed from the game, and the only animals that attack you are alligators. The game just feels very small in comparison to AC3. Let’s talk multiplayer. Don’t expect the addictive and excellent multiplayer from AC3. Instead, we get a cop-out of a strategy board game that is extremely boring. It requires 5% user input, and the game does the rest. You choose a faction (Abstergo or Assassin), pick your closest location on the map, then tap the icons of the opposite factions. You send off NPCs to fight a roll of the dice. Very boring and will keep you interested for all of 5 minutes. This is just like the assassin recruit missions in AC3, but used for multiplayer. There is nearly zero interaction with other players.
As it stands, Liberation is disappointing with its sloppy design. The story is confusing and not very interesting until the very end. The story is very short, the side missions aren’t very interesting, and the multiplayer is an absolute bore. The game is a fun weekend rental, but nothing more. I hope to see Aveline again, but the developers need to take more time. At least the game looks fantastic and is a huge technical feat for all portable games. It looks very close to the console games in terms of quality, but I know the Vita can do better still.
This is such a strange game, and to this day, I never got it. I tried out the original game for PS1, and it wasn’t very good. The whole game is about sprinting around really fast, shooting things, and jumping. The problem is that the gameplay feels so old and outdated that it isn’t worth playing even today. The HD graphics look nice, but there are areas that look like the developers just stretched the textures out.
I won’t even begin to explain the story other than Kurt is sent off to Canada to find a remaining mine crawler and is captured by an evil guy named Schwing Schwing. Yeah, I know; I won’t even bother. The game does have some good dialog and humor wrapped in it, but you have to get through the dated gameplay first. Kurt can run at about 50 MPH, and he is shooting everything on the site. He has his trusty parachute to glide and his sniper mask/face, which has different types of bullets. These range from grenades, bullets, and lock balls, which control doors as well as others. That isn’t the issue. The problem is that the entire game feels the same. Running around with floaty physics, lobbing grenades into small holes that are a pain to hit, and killing tons of enemies while scooting around. It gets boring after the first level.
You can play Max and Dr. Hawkins this time, but Max is even more mundane than Kurt. He has four arms, so you get to use four guns, but it isn’t much different. Dr. Hawkins has a complicated weapon-making system you can use for him, so maybe his levels are the most interesting. I honestly couldn’t stand more than a few levels of this game. I was really hoping MDK 2 was much different from the past game, but it is nearly the same.
The HD graphics look better, as do the new character models. Most of the textures look like they are just stretched out and weren’t redone like the character models. This isn’t the remake I was hoping for because the physics are still really floaty, and you feel like you’re skating on ice. The game just really feels 12 years old, and it shows in the gameplay. It doesn’t help that there is no native gamepad recognition like most PC games these days have. You have to map the controls yourself, which is a serious pain and takes a lot of tweaking. The resolution also stinks because it isn’t on widescreen. This was a lazy port, or it looks like they only went halfway and released it.
Is there any reason to play this game? If you like old-school shooters and platformers, then go ahead, but this game is pretty dull. I really tried to like it, but the only thing going for it is the humor and wacky story. The floaty platforming, poor HD upgrade, and gamepad mapping just made me give up on the game. I hope there is an MDK 3 and everything gets updated, but until then, don’t bother unless you love old school.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !