Three Games of 2011 that are Important to Gaming

Gaming in 2011 consisted of two things: first-person shooting and first-person shooting. As gamers we were forced to choose whose overly loud, hard to follow, and downright-confusing FPS experience to spend our time with. If their single player offerings failed to satisfy we had the opportunity to take our skills online and compete against millions of shoot-first-and-talk-later digital friends. Lost in this new-found rush to bolt on rollercoaster thrills and monthly map packs was the idea of a self-contained product. So join me as I shine a spotlight on three games that only ask you to play them and not become slaves to their quarterly financial reports.

Catherine

In a year where the gun ruled, I found it fitting to start with a game that featured no guns at all. Catherine -- developed by Atlus' Persona Team -- tells the story of Vincent Brooks. This character is perfect for a video game; he's a 32-year-old-slacker forced to take a look at his life and decide if he is ready to grow up. That choice is complicated by a one-night-stand he has at the beginning of the game with a girl named Catherine. Another wrinkle is thrown in as we learn that Vincent's current girlfriend Katherine McBride is pregnant with his child, and that Vincent has a curse placed on him for his unfaithful ways.

With the initial story setup in place, lets talk about the real beauty of this title: its take on the platforming puzzle. While our main character spends his days choosing between women, his nights are spent trapped in a nightmare world of sorts. Try to imagine a giant tower made of building blocks that can be moved sideways and pulled back and forth. Your goal is to arrange these building blocks into steps that will help you ascend to the top of the tower. At first the concept of building “steps” can be hard to wrap one’s brain around. Never has a video game made me feel so stressed and frustrated.

Right as I was about to call it quits, I began to realize that this title was more like a racing game than a puzzle solving experience. And that’s when Catherine becomes this amazing blend of racing game and puzzle solving. You start to become consumed by finding the best racing line up the tower. You learn techniques from others who are also trapped in the nightmare world. Before you know it you don't see the tower, you only see unformed steps that need to be assembled.

Why It's Important

Video games as a business have become so large and sales-centric that the idea of a lead character having his biggest battle with his own fears of becoming an adult is something special. Deep down in some nerds there is the unbearable fear that we are trapped by our hobbies. From the outside looking in, many of our friends are waiting for us to grow up out of this “phase”. Catherine allows you the opportunity to take responsibility for your actions, or to bury your head in the proverbial sand and let things continue uninterrupted. No other game best represented the internal struggle that nerds face on a daily basis.

---

Shadows of the Damned

Speaking of a dealing with relationships, the next title in this group deals with one tried and true unions in gaming: the player and their gun. In Grasshopper Manufacturer's Shadows of the Damned you play the role of Garcia (Fucking) Hotspur, on his quest to rescue his girlfriend Paula from the evil demon Fleming. With such a simple plot this title is allowed to embrace all the fun and silly devices enjoyed by every Grindhouse movie ever made.

Playing Shadows of the Damned is more akin to watching your favorite movie with your buddies and some six packs. Most encounters are reminiscent of Capcom’s Resident Evil 4/5, one of the reasons being that Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame was the creative producer. He, along with Goichi Suda, formed the development leads of Shadows. Fights take place in open areas that allow for some quick, fun battles against the undead masses. Boss battles consist of simple shoot-the-weak-point-and-dodge-the-enemies'-attack mechanics, and while most games would be tarred and feathered for such things Shadows of the Damned uses the elements in a perfect soup of gaming.

You want to see the next area, or fight the next group of opponents, because this game is about the adventure or road buddy movie story it tells with such wit and confidence that it not only outclasses its peers, it makes a joke so far over the head of its competitors heads that they can’t help but laugh at their own failings.

Why It's Important

For the past few years there has been a really simple, yet unanswered question: What is wrong with Japanese development? Why does it seem as though they have lost their grasp on gaming’s pulse. Having played Shadows of The Damned I can assure you that Japanese gaming is still thriving and adapting to some of our Western standards. There’s such a beautiful mending of cultures at work here that this game becomes more than a fun romp with a sidekick nicknamed The Big Boner, but a game that we have needed for years.

This title does its best to cover every corner of nerdom. There are the fun easy dick jokes that run over the entire game, to the more meta commentaries on road movie devices and grind house tropes. For years I have been pleading with friends to borrow some of my strange games from the East. Shadows of The Damned is the game that I can now hand to a friend and say this what Japanese gaming is and why I love it.

---

Bulletstorm

It seems fitting that in the year where the gun reigned supreme that the most important experience of this year would feature not only guns but headshots and space marines. People Can Fly’s Bulletstorm is a First-Person Shooter that shares the buddy-movie feel that Shadows of The Damned had. As main character Grayson Hunt you are on a quest for revenge. Explaining any more of the plot would only serve to lessen its impact on the gaming landscape. Just know this: the setup of this game is more than enough to convince you that not only do all the enemies need to be killed, but that you need to find fun and interesting ways to kill them.

While many other shooters this year relied on heavily directed and narrow scenarios, this Epic-published adventure let go and allowed the player to create the “moments”. Bulletstorm’s primary gameplay innovation is its “Leash”, which acts as a grabber. This is where the game stretches its wings and showcases some of the best First-Person Shooting of this generation.

Arenas transform into interactive playgrounds where you can create mayhem on a level not seen since the Doom-era. Instead of just pointing and shooting at an enemy, you can grab them with the leash which slows them down as they head towards you, at which point you can shift focus to another threat. If that particular enemy gets too close you can kick them away from you. While other games would handle this with a cutscene or video, this is just a normal encounter in Bulletstorm.

People Can Fly decided to add one more ingredient to this great game gumbo. The developer took the one universal gaming goal and added it to the mix: points. For nearly every action you are rewarded. Kick a guy? You get points for that. Leash a person into a spiked wall? You get points for that. Having such immediate feedback has a transporting effect. Suddenly you are back in the arcade blasting away at your favorite game.

Why It's Important

With so many titles taking control away from the player, Bulletstorm exceeds by giving you all the toys and space you need to play, then turning its back and leaving the room to let you have your fun. This is an example of fearless game design and it should be lauded for giving the player back control. Gaming should be about choice and creation, and no other game best embodied the “play” of games like Bulletstorm.

---

So, what games of 2011 do you think were important to the industry?

In case you missed it, here are Harold's three important games of 2010.