Vidya of 2011

It’s almost 2012 which means another year of gaming has gone by all too quickly.

I may not have bought as many games this year as the last and there are plenty of games released this year that I REALLY need to get… but it’s been a pretty good year.

I started off the year by playing a hell of a lot of Borderlands which I had just bought in December the year before. After that the first big game to start off 2011 was Dead Space 2, a game many people choose not to play despite it being one hell of an entertaining game. Seriously, I wish more people would get into Dead Space, it’s just so much fun…

Next up came a couple of DS games, Pokémon White (I was meant to get Black but the cover art confused me) and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective from Capcom. I absolutely love Ghost Trick and recommend anyone with a DS to pick it up if they ever find it on store or online shelves, it is so worth it. Soon after in April, the Nintendo 3DS was released in Australia which ended up being quiet the lackluster system riddled with so many poor design choices and the lack of a compelling library. It’s certainly not the great successor to the first DS a lot of people hoped it would be. No surprise then that I haven’t been playing much of it after finishing Ocarina of Time 3D. A couple of more games worth buying have come out for the 3DS, but in all honesty, they’re nothing compared to a game like Ghost Trick. That game alone eclipses everything released on the 3DS so far.

One of the more interesting releases this year came in the form of Duke Nukem Forever… a game that many thought would never be released and some wished never was. I, on the other hand, loved the fact that this game was actually going to be released. When it came out I got exactly what I expected from it, a very mediocre game that was half-baked and too outdated for its own good. Some people tried to take some bullshit high-brow moral stance on the game, saying that gaming had grown up and that there is no place for Duke in today’s age… these people are idiots. The day video games takes itself too seriously is the day it stops being fun. Sure this game isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s pretty damn funny that it was even released to begin with. I have my collector’s edition version of the game and as far as I’m concerned, I own a piece of gaming history.

Moving on this year has been pretty quiet on the Wii front compared to previous years. However, Australia and Europe were lucky enough to see the release of Xenoblade Chronicles from Monolith Soft… and damn do I absolutely love everything about that game. I spent well over 100 hours on my first run on the game and I still want more. If it wasn’t for the next two games I’m going to be talking about, I’d still be playing Xenoblade… I just can’t get enough of it!

Another game on Wii that made my year of vidya great was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. A game that promised much in the way of motion controlled sword play and delivered every step of the way. It was one hell of a celebration of Zelda’s 25th anniversary and has become one of my favourite games of all time.

Finally, to end the year on a pretty high note, the Star Wars MMO from BioWare, The Old Republic was finally released after years of development and with a huge amount of anticipation. Officially, Australians won’t be enjoying TOR until March, but I just couldn’t wait that long.

Along with all the games I finished this year, there have been plenty that, unfortunately, I haven’t gotten around to completing. The two that come to mind most recently are Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. But the game I feel really bad about not finishing is Shadows of the Damned.

Of course, it’s not like I didn’t want to finish these games, it’s just a matter of finding the time to play them all and unfortunately, being in Uni and doing a Bachelor of Education to become a teacher takes a lot of that time I would normally be spending playing video games… But now, at the end of the year, I have a nice, long break before the next year of uni starts in March to play as much vidya as I want…. most of which will be taken up by The Old Republic, I’m sure.

There are plenty of other games I have bought and played this year, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now and let others tell us about their gaming experiences of 2011…